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A MAN’S WORLD 






THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO 


MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 


A MAN’S WOELD 


BY 

ALBERT EDWARDS 3 


Nm turk 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1914 


AU rights reserved 


PZ3 

M 


COPTRIQHT, 1912 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1912, 
Reprinted October, November, 1912, 
Reprinted May, 1913; April, 1914. 


/S" 


rSESS OF T. MOBET & SOK, 
OSEBKFIELD, MASS., U. S. A. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


BOOK I 
I 

All books should have a preface, to tell what they are 
about and why they were written. 

This one is about myself — Arnold Whitman. 

I have sought in vain for a title which would be truly 
descriptive of the subject and form of my book. It is 
not a '‘Journal” nor a “Diary” for these words signify 
a daily noting down of events. Neither “Memoirs” 
nor “Recollections” meet the case, for much which I 
have written might better be called “Meditations.” It 
certainly is not a “Novel,” for that term implies a 
traditional “literary form,” a beginning, development 
and end. T am quite sure that my beginning goes back 
to the primordial day when dead matter first organized 
itself — or was organized — into a living cell. And 
whether or not I will ever “end” is an open question. 
There is no “unity” in the form of my narrative except 
the frame of mind which led me to write it, which has 
held me to task till now. 

It is the story of how I, born at the close of The Great 
War, lived and of the things — common-place and un- 
usual — which happened to me, how they felt at the 
time and how I feel about them now. 

“Autobiography” is the term which most truly de- 
. 1 , 


2 


A MAN’S WORLD 


scribes what I have tried to do. But that word is as- 
sociated with the idea of great men. The fact that I 
am not “great” has been my main incentive in writ- 
ing. We have text books a plenty on how to become 
Emperor, at least they tell how a man named Napoleon 
did it. There are endless volumes to which you may 
refer if you wish to become President of these United 
States — or rival the career of Captain Kidd. But such 
ambitions are rare among boys over eighteen. 

Even before that age I began to wish for a book like 
the one I have tried to write. I wanted to know how 
ordinary people lived. It was no help in those days 
to read how this Csesar or that came and saw and con- 
quered. I shared the ambitions of the boys about me. 
To be sure there were day-dreaming moments when we 
planned to explore Central Africa or found dynasties. 
But this was pure make-believe. We knew that not 
one man in thousands wins fame. For each moment 
we dreamed of greatness there were days on end 
when we looked out questioningly on the real world. 
We got no answers from om teachers. Most of the boys 
who were in school with me are today running a store, 
practicing law or medicine. They were prepared for it 
by reading Plutarch in class and Nick Carter on the sly. 

As a youth I wanted of course to gain a comfortable 
living. I wanted mildly to win some measure of dis- 
tinction, but all this was subordinate to a more definite 
desire to be a man, and not to be ashamed. A book 
about the ordinary life I was to enter, would have been 
a God-send to me. 

This then is to be the story of my life as it appears 
to me now, and how, in the face of the things which 
happened to me, I tried to be decent. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


3 


I have only two apologies to offer. All the rest of my 
writing has been scientific — on the subject of criminol- 
ogy. I am unpracticed in narration. And I have been 
enough in courts to realize the difference between 
“evidence” and “truth.” At best I can only give 
“evidence.” Others who knew me would tell of my 
life differently, perhaps more truly. But it will be as 
near truth as I can make it. 

And now to my story. 


II 

My earliest distinct memory is of an undeserved 
flogging. But from this grew my conception of Justice. 
It was, I think, my first abstract idea. 

My parents died long before I can remember and I 
was brought up in the home of the Rev. Josiah Drake, 
a Ciunberland Presbyterian minister of the Tennessee 
Mountains. He was my uncle, but I always called 
him “the Father.” He was the big fact of my childhood 
and my memory holds a more vivid picture of him 
than of any person I have known since. 

He was very tall, but stooped heavily. If he had 
shaved he would have resembled Lincoln, and this, I 
suppose, is why he wore so long and full a beard. For 
he was a Southerner and hated the Northern leader 
with all the bitterness of the defeated. And yet he was 
a Christian. I have never known one who served his 
God more earnestly, more devotedly. He was a scholar 
of the old type. He knew his Latin and Greek and 
Hebrew. And as those were rare accompUshments 
among the mountain clergy of Tennessee it gave him a 
great prestige. In all but name he was the Bishop of 
the country-side. His faith was that of Pym and Knox 


■4 


A MAN’S WORLD 


and Jonathan Edwards, a militant Puritan, fearless 
before the world, abject in humility before his God. 

Of his wife, my aunt Martha, I have scarcely a mem- 
ory. When I was very young she must have been 
important to me, but as I grew to boyhood she faded 
into indistinct haziness. I recall most clearly how she 
looked at church, not so much her face as her clothes. 
In all those years she must have had some new ones, 
but if so, they were always of the same stuff and pat- 
tern as the old. Sharpest of all I remember the ridges 
the bones of her corset made in the back of her dress 
as she leaned forward, resting her forehead on the pew 
in front of us, during the “ long prayer.” There was 
alway a flush on her face when it was over. I think 
her clothing cramped her somehow. 

I have also a picture of her heated, flurried look 
over the kitchen stove when she was engaged in the 
annual ordeal of "putting up” preserves. Even when 
making apple-butter she maintained a certain formal- 
ity. The one time when she would lapse from her dig- 
nity was when one of the negroes would rush into the 
kitchen with the news that a buggy was turning into 
our yard. The sudden scurry, the dash into her bed- 
room, the speed with which the hot faced woman of 
the kitchen would transform herself into a composed 
minister’s wife in black silk, was the chief wonder of 
my childhood. It was very rarely that the guests 
reached the parlor before her. 

All of her children had died in infancy except Oliver. 
As the Father’s religion frowned on earthly love, she 
idealized him in secret. I think she tried to do her 
Christian duty towards me, but it was decidedly per- 
fimctory. She was very busy with the big house to 


A MAN’S WORLD 


5 


keep in order, endless church work and the burden of 
preserving the appearances her husband’s position 
demanded. 

There was a large lawn before the house down to a 
picket fence. Mowing the grass and whitewashing 
that fence were the bitterest chores of my childhood. 
The main street of the village was so little used for 
traffic that once or twice every summer it was necessary 
to cut down the tall grass and weeds. Next to our 
house was the church, it was an unattractive box. 
I remember that once in a long while it was painted, 
but the spire was never completed above the belfry. 
There was a straggling line of houses on each side of 
the street and two stores. Beyond the Episcopal 
Church, the road turned sharply to the right and slipped 
precipitously down into the valley. Far below us was 
the county seat. About five hundred people lived 
there, and the place boasted of six stores and a railroad 
station. 

That was its greatest charm to my schoolmates. 
From any of the fields, on the hill-side beyond the vil- 
lage, we could look down and watch the two daily 
trains as they made a wide sweep up into this forgot- 
ten country. There was one lad whom I remember 
with envy. His father was carter for our community 
and sometimes he took his son down with him. They 
slept in the great covered wagon in the square before 
the county court house, and came back the next day. 
The boy’s name was Stonewall Jackson Clarke. He 
lorded it over the rest of us because he had seen a 
locomotive at close quarters. And he used to tell us 
that the court house was bigger than our two churches 
“with Blake’s store on top.” 


6 


A MAN’S WORLD 


I think that as a boy I knew the names of one or 
two stations on each side of the county seat. But it 
never occurred to me that the trains down there could 
take you to the cities and countries I studied about 
in my geography. Beyond the valley were Missionary 
Ridge and Lookout Mountain. But none of the boys 
I played with realized that the world beyond the 
mountains was anything like the country we could see. 
It would have surprised us if the teacher had pointed 
out to us on the school map the spot where our village 
stood. The land over which Cinderella’s Prince ruled 
was just as real to us as New York State or the coun- 
tries of Europe, the names of whose capitals we learned 
by rote. 

My cousin Oliver I disliked. As a youngster I did 
not know why. But now I can see that he had a craven 
streak in him, a taint of sneakiness, an inability to be 
bravely sincere. It was through him that I got my 
lesson in justice. 

He was then about sixteen and I eight. His hobby at 
the time was carpentry and, as I was supposed to dull 
his tools if I touched them, I was forbidden to play 
in the part of the barn where he had his bench. He 
was going to make an overnight visit to some friends 
in a neighboring township and at breakfast — he was 
to start about noon — he asked the Father to reiterate 
the prohibition. A few horns later I found Oliver 
smoking a corn-silk cigarette behind the bam. He 
begged me not ‘Ho tell on him.” Nothing had been 
further from my mind. As a bribe for my silence he 
said I might play with his tools. The spirit of his offer 
angered me — but I accepted it. 

After he had left the Father found me at his bench. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


7 


“Ollie said I could,” I explained. 

“At breakfast,” the Father replied, “he distinctly 
said you could not.” 

But I stuck to it. The Father had every reason to 
believe I was lying. It was not in Oliver’s nature to 
be kind to me without reason. And I could not, in 
honor, explain the reason. The Father was not the 
kind to spoil his children by sparing the rod, and there 
was no crime in his code more heinous than falsehood. 
He tried to flog me into a confession. 

There was nothing very tragic to me in being whipped. 
All the boys I knew were punished so. I had never 
given the matter any thought. As I would not admit 
that I had lied, this was the worst beating I ever re- 
ceived. He stopped at last from lack of breath and 
sent me to bed. 

“OUver will be back to-morrow,” he said. “It is 
no use persisting in your lie. You will be found out. 
And if you have not confessed. . . .” The threat was 
left open. 

I remember tossing about in bed and wishing that I 
had Ued and taken a whipping for disobedience. It 
would not have been so bad and would have been over 
at once. The next morning I sat sullenly in my room 
waiting for Oliver’s return, wondering if he would tell 
the truth. I was not at all confident. Towards noon, 
the buckboard turned in at the gate, one of the negroes 
took the horse and I heard the Father call Oliver into 
his study. 

Then suddenly a door slammed and I heard the 
Father’s step on the stair. He was running. He burst 
into my room and before I knew what was happening, 
he had picked me up in his arms. And, wonder of 


8 


A MAN’S WORLD 


wonders, he was crying. I had never before seen a 
grown man cry. He was asking me, I could not un- 
derstand what he meant, but he was asking me to for- 
give him. Then I heard the Mother’s voice at the 
door. 

“What is the matter, Josiah?” 

“Oh, Martha. It’s horrible! I caned the lad for a 
lie and he was telUng the Truth! Oh, my son, my son, 
forgive me.” 

At first all I realized was that I was not to be whipped 
any more. But all day long the Father kept me close 
to him and gradually from his talk I began vaguely 
to understand that there was such a thing as justice. 
I had always supposed that punishments were a matter 
of the parents’ good pleasure. That it had any relation 
to cause and effect, that sometimes a father might be 
right and sometimes wrong in beating a child, had 
never occurred to me. 

It is interesting how such things take form in a 
child’s mind. The Father bought me a set of tools 
like Ohver’s as a peace offering, and of course I was 
much more interested in them than in any abstract 
conception of justice. Yet in some gradual, sub- 
conscious way, the idea arranged itself in my mind. 
I began to judge everything by it. I suppose it marked 
the end of babyhood, the first faint beginning of man- 
hood. 


Ill 

It is not surprising that, in that austere home, my 
first fundamental idea should have been of justice 
rather than of love. 

There may have been a time when the affection be- 


A MAN’S WORLD 


9 


tween the Father and Mother had an outward show- 
ing. I would like to think that they had tasted gayer, 
honey-mooning days. I doubt it. They were help- 
mates rather than lovers. The Mother was well named 
Martha, busy with much serving. Her work had 
dovetailed into his. It would be juster to say her 
work was his. Their all-absorbing business was the 
winning of souls to Christ, and anything of only human 
interest seemed to them of the earth, earthy. I never 
saw anything like a quarrel between them, nor any 
passage of affection — except that the Father kissed her 
when going on a jomney or returning. 

It is hard for me to understand such people. Every- 
thing which has given me solace in life, all the pleasures 
of Uteratme and art, all the real as well as the written 
poems, they had rigorously cut off. 

Oliver and I kissed the Mother when we went to bed. 
I never remember kissing the Father. Yet he loved 
me. Sometimes I think he loved me more than his 
own son. I doubt if I was often separated from his 
thoughts, ever from his prayers. 

But all I knew as a boy about the affections, which 
expresses itself openly, was from Mary Dutton, my 
Sunday school teacher. She was brimming over with 
the joy of living and in every way the opposite of the 
austerity I knew at home. She was altogether wonder- 
ful to me. When the Mother was away at Synodical 
meetings, Mary used often to come for a whole day to 
keep the house in order. It was strange and typical 
to hear her sing rollicking college songs at our parlor 
organ — a wheezy contraption which seemed entirely 
dedicated to Moody and Sankey. 

All through my childhood Mary passed as a celestial 


10 


A MAN’S WORLD 


dream, a princess from some beautiful land of laughter 
and kisses. 

When I was about nine, and she I suppose near 
nineteen. Prof. Everett, who had been with her brother 
in college, began to visit the village. I disliked him at 
once with an instinctive jealousy. He has since won a 
large renown as a geologist, and was no doubt an esti- 
mable man, but if I should meet him now, after all 
these years, I am sure the old grudge would come to 
life and make me hate him. After a few months he 
married her and took her away to a nearby college 
town. 

About a year later, when the ache of her absence 
was beginning to heal, and, boy-like, I was in danger of 
forgetting her, a photograph came of her and the baby. 
It was such a loving picture! She looked so radiantly 
happy! It was set up on the mantel-piece in the parlor, 
and seemed to illuminate that sombre room. I re- 
member exactly how it leaned up against the bronze 
clock, between the plaster busts of Milton and Homer. 
In those days I supposed one had to be blind to be a 
poet. The picture kept her memory alive for me. 

Some months later Mary wrote that her husband 
was going away to attend a convention and she asked 
that I might come to bear her company for the week. 

The excitement of that first sortie out into the 
world is the most vivid thing which comes to me from 
my childhood. The Father drove me down the moun- 
tain-side to the county seat and so at last I saw a train 
at close quarters. Even when I had watched them 
through the Father’s campaign glasses I had not real- 
ized how large jhey were. He gave me in charge of 
the conductor, a man with an armless sleeve and 


A MAN’S WORLD 


11 


drooping moustaches, who had been a corporal in his 
regiment. 

There was a rattle and jerk — we had no air-brakes 
on the Tennessee trains in those days — and the rail- 
road station and the Father slipped out of sight. Such 
an amazing number of things went by the car window! 
I counted all the fields to the next station. There were 
thirty-seven. The conductor told me I was not to get off 
till the eighteenth stop. I started in valiantly to count 
them all, but my attention was distracted by the fact 
that things near the track went by so much faster 
than things far away. In “physics A” at college I 
learned an explanation of this phenomena which seemed 
all right on paper but even today it is entirely inade- 
quate when I am in a train and actually watching the 
earth revolve about distant points in either horizon. 
Trying to find a reason for it on that first railroad trip 
put me to sleep. At last the conductor woke me up 
and handed me over to Mary. 

I can recall only vaguely the details of that delect- 
able week, the strangeness of the entire experience is 
what sticks in my memory. There was the baby, so 
soft and round and contented. There was the German 
nurse, the first white servant I had ever seen. And 
there were the armchairs in the living-room, curved and 
comfortable and very different from the chairs in the 
parlor at home. After supper, instead of sending me 
off to bed, Mary read to me before the open fire, read 
me the wonderful stories of King Arthur. When at 
last I was sleepy, she came with me to my room. It 
embarrassed me to undress before her, but it was very 
sweet to have her tuck me in and kiss me “goodnight.” 

Mary “spoiled” me, to use the Father’s expression, 


12 


A MAN’S WORLD 


systematically, she let me eat between meals and 
gorged me with sweets. One night it made me sick. 
I have forgotten whether “dough-nuts” or “pop- 
overs” were to blame. When the doctor had gone 
away, laughing — for it was not serious — Mary took me 
into her own bed. I would gladly have suffered ten 
times the pain for the warm comfort of her arms about 
me. 

It was during this visit that all the side of Life we 
call Art began to appeal to me. The King Arthur 
legends were my introduction to literature, Malory 
and Tennyson’s “Idylls” were the first written stories 
or poems I ever enjoyed. And I think my first impres- 
sion of Beauty, was the sight of Mary nursing the baby. 
I am sure she did not realize with what wondering eyes 
I watched her. I was only a little shaver and she could 
not have guessed what a novel sight it was for me. At 
home, everything human, which could not be sup- 
pressed, was studiously hidden. I think some of the 
old Madonnas in which the Mother is suckling the 
Child would have seemed blasphemous to the Father. 
Art has always seemed to me at its highest when oc- 
cupied with some such simple hiunan thing. 

IV 

I had two playmates in those days, Margaret and Al- 
bert Jennings. Their father had been on “Stonewall” 
Jackson’s staff. “Al” was my own age, but seemed 
older and Margot was a year younger. Until I went 
away to school we were almost inseparable. Only in 
affairs of the church were we apart, for they were 
Episcopalians. 

Our biggest common interest was a “Chicken Com- 


A MAN’S WORLD 


IS 


pany.” We had built an elaborate run in the back 
yard of the parsonage and sometimes had as many as 
thirty hens. This enterprise led us into the great sin of 
our childhood — steaUng. 

Why I stole I cannot explain. I never pretended to 
Justify it. We would sell a dozen eggs to my household 
and then take as many out of the pantry as were neces- 
sary to complete a dozen for Mrs. Jennings. We did 
this off and on for four or five years. When the hens 
laid freely we did not have to. But if there were not 
enough eggs to satisfy the demands of the two families, 
we stole. I think we blamed it on the chickens. A1 
and I were always full of great projects for improving 
the stock or the run and so needed money. There was 
little danger of discovery, because housekeeping was a 
very unexact science in our southern homes. And just 
because the chickens refused to lay as they should, 
seemed a very trivial reason for sacrificing our plans. 
But we did not like to do it. We always searched the 
nests two or three times in the hope of finding the eggs 
we needed. 

A1 was a queer chap. I remember one time we were 
two eggs short. 

“We’ll have to steal them from your mother, ” I said. 

“You maybe a thief,” he retorted angrily, as we 
started after the spoils. “But I intend to pay it back. 
It’s just a loan.” 

There was a weak subterfuge to the effect that Margot 
knew nothing of our dishonesty. The three of us had 
decided upon this in open council, to protect her in 
case we were caught. If there were to be any whippings, 
it was for the masculine members of the firm to take 
them. But Margot knew, just as well as we did, how 


14 


A MAN’S WORLD 


many eggs were laid and how far our sales exceeded 
that number. But the candy she bought did not 
seem to trouble her conscience any more than it did her 
digestion. I have met no end of older women, in per- 
fectly good church standing, who are no more squeam- 
ish about how their men folk gain their income. 

There was another very feminine trait about Mar- 
got. We divided our profits equally, in three parts. 
A1 and I always put most of our share back into the 
business. Margot spent hers on candy. A1 used to 
object to this arrangement sometimes, but I always 
stood up for her. 

This was because I expected to marry her. I do not 
remember when it was first suggested, but it was an 
accepted thing between us. Col. Jennings used laugh- 
ingly to encovu’age us in it. I spoke of it once at home, 
but the Father shook his head and said it would grieve 
him if I married outside of our denomination. The 
Baptists were his special aversion, but next to them 
he objected to Episcopalians, whom he felt to be tainted 
with popery. 

This led to a quarrel with Margot. I told her flatly 
that I would not marry her, unless she became a Presby- 
terian. She was a little snob and, as the most consider- 
able people of the county belonged to her church, she 
preferred to give me up rather than slip down in the 
social scale. For several days we did not speak to each 
other. I refused to let any misguided Episcopalians 
in my yard. As the chicken run was in my domain, Al, 
who was smaller than I, became an apostate. But 
Margot held out stubbornly, until her mother inter- 
vened and told us, with great good sense, that we were 
much too young to know the difference between one 


A MAN’S WORLD 


15 


sect and another, that we had best suspend hostilities 
until we knew what we were fighting about. So peace 
was restored. 

This calf-love of mine was strangely cold. Some of 
the boys and girls in school used to “spoon.” But 
“holding hands” and so forth seemed utterly inane 
to me. I do not know what Margot felt about it, but 
I no more thought of kissing her than her brother. 
The best thing about her was that she also loved King 
Arthur. Mary had given me a copy of Malory. Up 
in our hay-loft, Margot and I used to take turns read- 
ing it aloud and acting it. Only once in a long while 
could we persuade A1 to join us in these childish dra- 
matics. I was generally Launcelot. Sometimes she 
would be Elaine, but I think she loved best to be the 
Queen. 

At fourteen I discovered Froissart’s Chronicles in 
the Father’s library. It had a forbidding cover and I 
might never have unearthed it, if he had not set me to 
work dusting his books in punishment for some minor 
delinquency. On the bottom shelf there were three 
big lexicons, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Next to them 
was the great family Bible. Then came Cruden’s 
Concordance, a geography of Palestine, “The Decline 
and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Motley’s “Dutch 
Republic” — and Froissart! As I was dusting it gloom- 
ily, it slipped from my hands and fell open to an old 
engraving of the Murder of Richard II. There were 
twenty-four plates in that volume. Never did boy 
enter into such a paradise. 

I can only guess what the Father would have thought 
of my filling my mind with such lore. I took no chances 
in the matter. With great pains, I arranged the books 


16 


A MAN’S WORLD 


SO that the absence of Froissart would not be noticed. 
Until I went East to school at sixteen, it reposed in 
the bottom of the bran bin in the loft, and when 
at last I went, I gave it to Margot as my choicest 
treasure. 

When I saw her ten years ago, she showed me the old 
book. The sight of it threw us both under constraint, 
bringing back those old days when we had planned to 
iparry. The funeral of a dream always seem sadder 
to me than the death of a person. 

Permanent camp meetings, the things which grew 
into the Chautauqua movement, were just beginning 
their popularity. One had been started a few score 
miles from our village and the year I went away to 
school, the Father had been made director. We left 
home early in the summer, and I was to go East with- 
out coming back. 

On the eve of my departure, I went to see Margot. 
It was my first formal call and, in my new long trousers, 
I was much embarrassed. For an hour or so we sat 
stiffly, repeating every ten minutes a promise to write 
to each other. I remember we figured out that it 
would take me ten years to finish the Theological 
Seminary and be ready to marry her. It was ordained 
that I was to study for the ministry. No other career 
had ever been suggested to me. 

The constraint wore off when I asked her for a photo- 
graph to take with me to school. From some instinct 
of coquetry she pretended not to want me to have one. 
Boys at school, she said, had their walls covered with 
pictures of girls, she would not think of letting hers be 
put up with a hundred others. When I solemnly prom- 
ised not to have any picture but hers, she said she had 


A MAN’S WORLD 


17 


no good one. There was one on the mantel, and I 
grabbed it in spite of her protest. 

She was a bit of a tomboy and a hoydenish scuffle 
followed. In the scramble my hand fell accidentally 
on her breast. It sent a dazzling thrill through me. 
The vision came to me of Mary nursing the baby and 
the beauty of her white breast. The idea connected 
itself with Margot, struggling in my arms. I knew 
nothing of the mystery of life. I cannot tell what I 
felt — it was very vague — but I knew some new thing 
had come to me. 

Margot noticed the change. I suppose I stopped 
the struggle with her. 

“What’s the matter?” she asked. 

“Nothing.” 

But I went off and sat down apart. 

“What’s the matter?” she insisted, coming over and 
standing in front of me. “Did I hurt you?” 

“No,” I said. “But we mustn’t wrestle like that. 
We aren’t children any more.” 

She threw up her head and began to make fun 
of me and my new long trousers. But I interrupted 
her. 

“Margot! Margot! Don’t you understand?” 

I took hold of her hands and pulled her down beside 
me and kissed her. It was the first time. I am sure 
she did not understand what I meant — I was not clear 
about it myself. But she fell suddenly silent. And while 
I sat there with my arm about her, I saw a vision of 
Mary’s home and the warm joy of it. Margot and I 
would have a home like that; not like the Father’s. 

I was under the spell of some dizzying emotion which 
none of our grown up words will fit. The emotion, I 


18 


A MAN’S WORLD 


suppose, comes but once, and is too fleeting to have 
won a place in adult dictionaries. It was painful and 
awesome, but as I walked home I was very happy. 

V 

Of course I never questioned the Father’s religious 
dogmas. I did not even know that they might be 
questioned. But two things troubled me persistently. 

I had been taught that our Saviour was the Prince 
of Peace, that His chief commandment was the law of 
love. But when adults got together there was always 
talk of the war. I do not think there was any elder 
or deacon in our church who had not served. How 
often I listened to stories of the wave of murder and 
rapine that had swept through our mountains only 
a few years before! 

I remember especially the placing of a battle monu- 
ment just outside our village and the horde of strangers 
who came from various parts of the state for the cere- 
mony. The heroes were five men in gray uniforms, 
all who were left of the company which had stood there 
and had been shot to pieces. One was an old man, 
three were middle aged, and one was so young that he 
could not have been more than sixteen on the day of the 
fight. The man who had been their captain stayed 
at the parsonage. After supper the principal men of 
the village gathered in our parlor. I stood by the Fath- 
er’s chair and listened wide-eyed as, in his cracked 
voice, the Captain told us all the details of that slaugh- 
ter. I remember that in the excitement of his story- 
telling the old soldier became profane, and the Father 
did not rebuke him. 

Somehow I could not feel any romance in modern 


A AIAN’S WORLD 


19 


warfare, there seemed no similarity between these men 
and the chivalric heroes of The Round Table. Perhaps 
if Launcelot had been a real person, there in the par- 
sonage parlor, and had told me face to face and vividly 
how he had slain the false knight Gawaine, had made 
me see the smear of blood on his sword blade, the cloven 
headed corpse of his enemy, that also they might have 
seemed abhorrent. 

As a little boy I could not understand how a follower 
of Jesus could be a soldier. I did not know that grown 
men were also asking the same question. Years after- 
wards I remember coming across Rossetti’s biting son- 
net — “Vox ecclesise, vox Christi” — 

“ O’er weapons blessed for carnage, to fierce youth 
From evil age, the word has hissed along: — 

Ye are the Lord’s: go forth, destroy, be strong: 

Christ’s Church absolves ye from Christ’s law of ruth.” 

I do not know what the Father would have thought of 
those words, for, like some of the Roundhead leaders 
of Cromwell’s time, he had been Chaplain as well as 
Captain of his company. If the war had broken out 
again, as the “Irreconcilables” believed it surely would, 
and if Oliver had refused to enlist on the ground that 
he was studying for Christ’s ministry, I think the 
Father would have cursed him. 

The other thing which worried me was a “gospel 
hymn,” which we sang almost every Sunday. It had a 
swinging tune, but the words were horrible. 

There is a fountain filled with blood. 

Drawn from Emanuel’s veins; 

And sinners plunged beneath that flood 
Lose all their guilty stains. 


20 


A MAN’S WORLD 


Such a gory means of salvation seemed much more 
frightful to my childish imagination than the most 
sulphurous hell. 

These things I was told I would understand when I 
grew up. This was the answer to so many questions, 
that I got out of the habit of asking them. I believed 
that the Father was very wise and was willing to take 
his word for everything. 

At eleven he persuaded me “to make a profession of 
faith” and join the church. It is only within these 
latter, mellower years that I can look back on this in- 
cident without bitterness. It was so utterly unfair. 
The only thing I was made to understand was that I 
was taking very serious and irrevocable vows. This 
was impressed on me in every way. I was given a 
brand new outfit of clothes. I had never had new un- 
derwear and new shoes simultaneously with a new suit 
and hat before. Such things catch a child’s imagina- 
tion. I had to stand up before the whole congregation 
and reply to un-understandable questions with answers 
I had learned by rote. Then for the first time I was 
given a share of the communion bread and wine. The 
solemnity of the occasion was emphasized. But there 
was no effort — at least no successful one — to make me 
understand what it was all about. When I became old 
enough to begin to think of such things, I found that 
I had already sworn to believe the same things as long 
as I lived. Try as hard as I can to remember the many 
kindnesses of my adoptive parents, reaUzing, as I surely 
do, how earnestly and prayerfully they strove to do the 
best for me, this folly remains my sharpest recollection 
of them. It was horribly unfair to a youngster who 
took his word seriously. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


21 


But I never had what is called a ‘‘religious experi- 
ence” until that summer in camp meeting when I was 
sixteen. 

In after years, I have learned that the older and 
richer sects, have developed more elaborate and artistic 
stage-settings for their mysteries. I cannot nowadays 
attend a service of the Paulist Fathers, or at Saint 
Mary the Virgin’s without feeling the intoxication of 
the heavy incense and the wonderful beauty of the 
music. But for a boy, and for the simple mountain 
folk who gathered there, that camp was suflfiiciently 
impressive. 

It stood on the edge of a mirror lake, under the 
shadow of Lookout Mountain, in one of the most 
beautiful corners of Tennessee. Stately pines crowded 
close about the clearing and beyond the lake the hill 
dropped away, leaving a sweeping view out across the 
valley. Man seemed a very small creature beneath 
those giant trees, in the face of the great distances 
to the range of mountains beyond the valley. There 
was nothing about the camp to recall one’s daily life. 
The thousand and one things which insistently distract 
one’s attention from religion had been excluded. 

Every care had been taken to make the camp con- 
trast with, and win people from, “The Springs,” — a 
fashionable and worldly resort nearby. There was no 
card playing nor dancing, as such things were supposed 
to offend the Deity. The stage to the railroad station 
did not run on Sunday. 

After breakfast every day the great family — a hun- 
dred people or more — gathered by the lake-side and the 
Father led in prayer. During the morning there were 
study courses, most of which were Bible classes. I 


22 


A MAN’S WORLD 


only remember two which were secular. One was on 
Literature and the King James Version was taken as a 
model of English prose. No mention was made of the 
fact that much of the original had been poetry. There 
was also a course on “ Science.” A professor of Exigesis 
from a neighboring Theological Seminary delivered a 
venomous polemic against Darwin. The “Nebular 
Hypothesis” was demolished with many convincing 
gestures. 

My little love affair with Margot had put me in a 
state of exaltation. Other things conspired to make me 
especially susceptible to religious suggestion. Oliver 
was back from his second year in the seminary. My dis- 
like for him was forgotten. He seemed very eloquent to 
me in the young people’s meetings, which he conducted. 

Mary was there with her three children and had 
taken for the summer the cottage at one end of the 
semi-circle overlooking the lake. Her husband, Prof. 
Everett, had been away for several months on the 
geological expedition to Alaska, which was, I believe, 
the foundation of the eminence he now holds in that 
science. Mary also had been caught up in the religious 
fervor of the place. To me she seemed wonderfully 
spiritualized and beautiful beyond words. Oliver and 
I used often to walk home with her after the evening 
meetings and, sitting out on her porch over the water, 
talk of religion. 

Sundays were continuous revival meetings. Famous 
fishers-of-souls came every week. All methods from 
the most spiritual to the coarsest were used to wean 
us from our sins. It was “Salvation” Milton, who 
landed me. 

He was the star attraction of the summer’s program. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


23 


He stayed in the camp two weeks, fourteen days of 
tense emotion, bordering on hysteria. To many people ' 
"Salvation” Milton has seemed a very Apostle. His 
message has come to them as holy words from the 
oracle of the Most High. To such it may, I fear, seem 
blasphemous for me — a criminologist — to write of him 
as a specimen of pathology. But I have met many 
who were very like him in our criminal courts. 

I have no doubt of his sincerity — up to the limit 
of his poor distorted brain. He had moments of ex- 
altation when he thought that he talked face to face 
with God. He believed intensely in his mission. He 
had lesser moments, which he regretted as bitterly 
as did his friends who, like the sons of Noah, covered 
him with a sheet that his drunken nakedness might 
not be seen by men. He was pitifully unbalanced. 
But I think that if he had been given the strength of 
will to choose, he would have always been the ardent 
servant of God we saw in him at the camp meeting. 

He was a master of his craft. By meditation and 
fasting and prayer he could whip himself into an 
emotional state when passionate eloquence flowed 
from his lips with almost irresistible conviction. He 
was also adept at the less venerable tricks of his trade. 

It was his custom in the afternoon about four to 
walk apart in the woods and spend an hour or more on 
his knees. Once he took me with him. I remember 
the awe of sitting there on the pine needles, in the 
silence of the forest and watching him "wrestle with 
the Spirit.” I tried to pray also, but I could not keep 
my mind on it so long. Suddenly he began to speak, 
asking Christ’s intercession on my behalf. And walk- 
ing home, he talked to me about my soul. For the first 


24 


A MAN’S WORLD 


time I was “overtaken by a conviction of sin.” That 
night he preached on the Wages of Sin. 

I will never forget the horror of fear which held me 
through that service. Milton was in the habit of deal- 
ing with and overcoming men of mature mind. Such 
a lad as I was putty in his hands. When, out of the 
shivering terror of it, came the loud-shouted promise 
of salvation, immunity from all he had made me feel 
my just deserts, I stumbled abjectly up the aisle and 
took my place among the “Seekers.” I must say he 
had comfort ready for us. I remember he put his arm 
over my shoulder and told me not to tremble, not to 
be afraid. God was mighty to save. Long before the 
world was made He had builded a mansion for me in 
the skies. He would wash away all my sins in the blood 
of the Lamb. Milton had scared me into a willingness 
to wade through an ocean filled with blood if safety 
lay beyond. 

The next morning brought me peace. I suppose my 
overstrained nerves had come to the limit of endurance. 
I thought it was the promised “peace which passeth 
all understanding.” I was sure of my salvation. Sev- 
eral weeks of spiritual exaltation followed. I read the 
Bible passionately, sometimes alone, more often with 
Oliver or Mary, for it was the fashion to worship in 
common. Whenever the opportunity offered in the 
meetings, I made “public testimony.” 

But I would have found it hard to define my faith. 
I had been badly frightened arid had recovered. This, 
I thought, came from God. I had only a crude idea 
of the Deity. In general, I thought of Him as very 
like the Father, with white hair and a great beard. 
I thought of Him as intimately interested in all I did 


A MAN’S WORLD 


25 


and thought, jotting it all down in the tablets of judg- 
ment — a bookkeeper who never slumbered. I was 
not at all clear on the Trinity. These mountain Presby- 
terians were Old Testament Christians. The Christ 
had a minor role in their Passion Play. They talked 
a good deal of the Holy Ghost, but God, the Father, 
the King of Kings, the jealous Jehovah of Israel was 
their principal deity. We were supposed to love Him, 
but in reahty we all feared Him. However, I was very 
proud in the conviction that I was one of His elect. 

Advancing years bring me a desire for a more subtle 
judgment on things than the crude verdict of “right” 
or “wrong.” I look back on my religious training, 
try to restrain the tears and sneers and think of it 
calmly. I doubt if any children are irreligious. Some 
adults claim to be, but I think it means that they are 
thoughtless — or woefully discouraged. We live in 
the midst of mystery. We are born from it and when 
we die we enter it again. Anyone who thinks must have 
some attitude towards the Un-understandable — must 
have a religion. And loving parents inevitably will 
try to help their children to a clean and sweet emotional 
relation towards the unknown. Evidently it is not an 
easy undertaking. For the adults who surrounded me 
in my childhood, in spite of their earnest efforts, in 
spite of their prayers for guidance, instead of develop- 
ing my religious life, distorted it horribly. They were 
sincerely anxious to lead me towards Heaven. I do 
not think it is putting it too strongly to say they were 
hounding me down the road which is paved with good 
intentions. 

I can think of no more important task, than the de- 
velopment of a sane and healthy “course of religious 


26 


A MAN’S WORLD 


education for children.” The one supplied in our Sun- 
day schools seems to me very far below the mark. It 
is a work which will require not only piety, but a deep 
knowledge of pedagogics. 

Certainly the new and better regime will discourage 
precocious “professions of faith.” I do not think it 
will insist that we are born in sin and born sinful. Above 
all it will take care not to make religion appear ugly 
or fearsome to childish imagination. Even the most 
orthodox Calvinists will learn — let us hope — to re- 
serve “the fountain filled with blood” and the fires of 
Hell for adults. The Sunday school of the future will 
be held out in the fields, among the flowers, and the 
wonder of the child before this marvelous universe of 
ours will be cherished and led into devotion — into 
natural gratitude for the gift of the earth and the ful- 
ness thereof. Surely this is wiser than keeping the 
children indoors to learn the catechism. I can think 
of nothing which seems to me less of a religious cere- 
mony than those occasions, when Bibles are given to 
all the Sunday school scholars who can recite the en- 
tire catechism. What have youngsters to do with such 
finespun metaphysics? Oh! the barren hours I wasted 
trying to get straight the differences between “Justi- 
fication,” “Sanctification,” and “Adoption” — or was it 
“Redemption.” One would suppose that Jesus had 
said “Suffer the little children, who know the cate- 
chism, to come unto me.” 

But, of course, at sixteen, I had no such ideas as 
these. I knew of no religious life except such as I 
saw about me. I had been carefully taught to believe 
that a retentive memory and a glib tongue were pleas- 
ing to the Most High. I was very contemptuous to- 
wards the children of my age who were less proficient. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


27 


VI 

In the midst of this peace a bolt fell which ended 
my religious life. Its lurid flame momentarily illumined 
the great world beyond my knowing. And the vision- 
ing of things for which I was unprepared was too much 
for me. I may not be scientifically correct, but it has 
always seemed to me that what I saw that July night 
stunned the section of my brain which has to do with 
“Acts of faith.” Never since have I been able to be- 
lieve, religiously, in anything. 

It was a Sunday. At the vesper service, all of us 
seated on the grass at the edge of the lake, the Father 
had preached about our bodies being the temples of 
God. As usual, Oliver led the young people’s meeting 
after supper. These more intimate gatherings meant 
more to me than the larger assemblies. Om text was 
“Blessed are the pure in heart.” I remember clearly 
how Oliver looked, tall and stalwart and wonderful 
in his young manhood. He has a great metropolitan 
church now and he has won his way by oratory. The 
eloquence on which he was to build his career had al- 
ready begun to show itself. 

Mary sang. I have also a sharp picture of her. She 
wore a light lawn dress, which the brilliant moon-light 
turned almost white. Her years seemed to have fal- 
len from her and she looked as she had done on her wed- 
ding night. In her rich, mellow contralto she sang the 
saddest of all church music: “He was despised.” 

Something delayed me after the service and when I 
looked about for Oliver and Mary they were gone. I 
went to her house but the maid said they had not come. 
The mystery of religious fervor and the glory of the 


28 


A MAN’S WORLD 


night kept me from waiting on the verandah, called me 
out to wander down by the water’s edge. But I wearied 
quickly of walking and, coming back towards the house, 
lay down on the grass under a great tree. The full moon 
splashed the country round with sketches of ghostly 
white and dense black shadows. 

Two ideas were struggling in my mind. There was an 
insistent longing that Margot might be with me to share 
this wonder of religious experience. Conflicting with 
this desire, compelled, I suppose, by the evening’s 
texts, was a strong push towards extreme asceticism. 
I was impatient for Oliver’s return. I wanted to ask 
him why our church had abandoned monasticism. 

How long 1 pondered over this I do not know. Per- 
haps I fell asleep, but at last I heard them coming back 
through the woods. There was something in Oliver’s 
voice, which checked my impulse to jump up and 
greet them. It was something hot and hurried, some- 
thing fierce and ominous. But as they came out into 
a patch of moonlight, although they fell suddenly si- 
lent, I knew they were not quarreling. Mary cautioned 
him with a gesture and went into the house. Through 
the open windows I heard her tell the negro maid that 
she might go home. I heard her say “Good night” 
and lock the back door. The girl hummed a lullaby 
as she walked away. All the while Oliver sat on the 
steps. 

I do not know what held me silent, crouching there 
in the shadow. I had no idea of what was to come. 
But the paralyzing hand of premonition was laid upon 
me. I knew some evil was approaching, and I could 
not have spoken or moved. 

“Oliver,” she said, in a voice I did not know, as she 


A MAN’S WORLD 


29 


came out on the porch, “you must go away. It is 
wrong. Dreadfully wrong.” 

But he jumped up and threw his arms about her. 

“It’s sin, Oliver,” she said, “you’re a minister.” 

“I’m a man,” he said, fiercely. 

Then they went into the house. It was not till 
years afterwards, when I read Ebber’s book — “ Homo 
Sum” that I realized, in the story of that priest strug- 
gling with his manhood, what the moment must have 
meant to Oliver. 

I tiptoed across the grass to the shade of the house. 
A blind had been hurriedly pulled down — too hur- 
riedly. A thin ribbon of light streamed out below it. 

■ I could not now write down what I saw through that 
window, if I tried. But in the frame of mind of those 
days, with my ignorance of life, it meant the utter 
desecration of all holiness. Oliver and Mary had stood 
on my highest pedestal, a god and goddess. I saw them 
in the dust. No. It seemed the veriest mire. 

I turned away at last to drown myself. It was near 
the water’s edge that they picked me up unconscious 
some hours later. The doctors called it brain fever. 
Almost a month passed before I became rational again. 
I was amazed to find that in my delirium I had not 
babbled of what I had seen. Neither Oliver nor Mary 
suspected their part in my sickness. More revolting 
to me than what they had done was the hypocrisy 
with which they hid it. 

Above all things I dreaded any kind of an explanation 
and I developed an hypocrisy as gross as theirs. I 
smothered my repugnance to Mary’s kisses and pre- 
tended to like to have Oliver read the Bible to me. And 
when I was able to get about again, I attended meetings 


30 


A MAN’S WORLD 


as before. There was black hatred in my heart and the 
communion bread nauseated me. What was left of the 
summer was only a longing for the day when I should 
leave for school. Nothing mattered except to escape 
from these associations. 

I am not sure what caused it — the weeks of religious 
hysteria which accompanied my conversion, what I saw 
through the crack below the window curtain, or the fever 
— but some time between the coming of “Salvation” 
Milton and my recovery, that little speck of gray mat- 
ter, that minute ganglia of nerve-cells, with which we 
believe, ceased to function. 


BOOK II 


I 

Early in September Oliver took me East to school. 
It was not one of our widely advertised educational 
institutions. The Father had chosen it, I think, be- 
cause it was called a Presbyterial Academy and the 
name assured its orthodoxy. 

I remember standing on the railroad platform, after 
Oliver had made all the arrangements with the principal, 
waiting for the train to come which was to carry him 
out of my sight. How long the minutes lasted! It is a 
distressing thing for a boy of sixteen to hate anyone 
the way I hated my cousin. I was glad that he was not 
really my brother. 

It is strange how life changes our standards. Now, 
when I think back over those days, I am profoundly 
sorry for him. It was, I think, his one love. It could 
have brought him very little joy for it must have 
seemed to him as heinous a sin as it did to me. 

Five years later he married. I am sure he has been 
scrupulously faithful to his wife. She is a woman to be 
respected and her ambition has been a great stimulus 
to his upclimbing. But I doubt if he has really loved 
her as he must have loved Mary to break, as he did, 
all his morality for her. To him love must have 
seemed a thing of tragedy. But boyhood is stern, 
I had no pity for him. 

His going lifted a great weight from me. As I walked 
31 


32 


A MAN’S WORLD 


back alone to the school, I wanted to shout. I was be- 
ginning a new life — my own. I had no very clear 
idea of what I was going to do with this new freedom 
of mine. I can only recall one plank in my platform — I 
was going to fight. 

The one time I can remember fighting at home, I 
had been thrashed by the boy, caned by the school 
teacher and whipped by the Father, when he noticed 
my black eye. Fighting was strictly forbidden. After 
this triple beating I fell into the habit of being bullied. 
As even the smallest boy in our village knew I was 
afraid to defend myself, I was the victim of endless 
tyrannies. The first use I wanted to make of my new 
freedom was to change this. I resolved to resent the 
first encroachment. 

It came that very day from one of the boys in the 
fourth class. I remember that his name was Blake. 
Just before supper we had it out on the tennis-court. 
It was hardly fair to him. He fought without much en- 
thusiasm. It was to him part of the routine of keeping 
the new boys in order. To me it was the Great Emanci- 
pation. I threw into it all the bitterness of all the 
humiliations and indignities of my childhood. The 
ceremonial of “seconds” and “rounds” and “referee” 
was new to me. At home the boys just jumped at 
each other and punched and bit, and pulled hair and 
kicked until one said he had enough. As soon as they 
gave the word to begin, I shut my eyes and hammered 
away. We battered each other for several rounds and 
then Blake was pronounced victor on account of some 
technicality. 

They told me, pityingly, that I did not know how to 
fight. But all I had wanted was to demonstrate that 


A MAN’S WORLD 


33 


I was not afraid. I had won that. It was the only 
fight I had in school. Even the bulhes did not care to 
try conclusions with me, and I had no desire to force 
trouble. I had won a respect in the httle community 
which I had never enjoyed before. 

In a way it was a small matter, but it was portentous 
for me. It was the first time I had done the forbidden 
thing and found it good. The Father had been wrong 
in prohibiting self-defense. It was an entering wedge 
to realize that his wisdom had been at fault here. In 
time his whole elaborate structure of morals fell to the 
ground. 

The school was a rehgious one, of course. But the 
teachers, with eminent good sense, realized that other 
things were more important for growing boys than 
professions of faith. It seemed that, after my illness, 
my mind woke up in sections. The part which was to 
ponder over Mary and Oliver, which was to think out 
my relation to God, for a long time lay dormant. I 
puttered along at my Latin and Greek and Algebra, 
played football and skated and, with the warm weather, 
went in for baseball. 

In the spring a shadow came over me — the idea of 
returning home. The more I thought of another sum- 
mer in the camp, the more fearsome it seemed. At 
last I went to the doctor. 

He was the first, as he was one of the most impor- 
tant, of the many people whose kindness and influence 
have illumined my life. He was physical director of 
the school and also had a small practice in the village. 
There were rumors that he drank and he never came to 
church. If there had been another doctor available, 
he would not have been employed by the school. 


34 


A MAN’S WORLD 


I never knew a man of more variable moods. Some 
days on the football field he would throw himself into 
the sport with amazing vim for an adult, would laugh 
and joke and call us by our first names. Again he 
would sit on the bench by the side-line scowling fiercely, 
taking no interest in us, muttering incoherently to 
himself. One day another boy and I were far “out of 
bounds” looking for chestnuts. We saw him coming 
through the trees and hid under some brush-wood. 
He had a gun under one arm, but was making too much 
noise for a hunter. He gesticulated wildly with his 
free arm and swore appallingly. We were paralyzed 
with fear. I do not think either of us told anyone about 
it. For in spite of his queer ways, all the boys, who were 
not sneaky nor boastful, liked him immensely. 

One Saturday afternoon I found courage to go to 
his office. There were several farmers ahead of me. 
I had a long wait, and when at last my turn came I was 
mightily frightened. 

“If I go home this summer,” I blurted out, “I’ll be 
sick again.” 

Oliver had told him about my illness. At first he 
laughed at me, but I insisted so doggedly that he began 
to take me seriously. He tried to make me tell him mj' 
troubles but I could not. Then he examined me care- 
fully, tapping my knee for reflexes and doing other 
incomprehensible things which are now commonplace 
psychological tests. But for a country doctor in those 
days they were very progressive. 

“Why are you so excited?” he asked suddenly, 
“Are you afraid I’ll hurt you?” 

“No” I said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to go home.” 

“You’re a rum chap.” 


A MAN’S WORLD 


35 


He sat down and wrote to the Father. I do not know 
what argument he used, but it was successful. A 
letter came in due course giving me permission to ac- 
cept an invitation to pass the summer with one of my 
schoolmates. 

It was a wonderful vacation for me — my first taste 
of the sea. The boy’s family had a cottage on the south 
shore of Long Island. The father who was a lawyer 
went often to the city. But the week ends he spent 
with us were treats. He played with us! He really 
enjoyed teaching me to swim and sail. I remember my 
pride when he would trust me with the main-sheet 
or the tiller. The mother also loved sailing. That she 
should enjoy playing with us was even a greater sur- 
prise to me than that my friend’s father should. 
Whatever their winter religion was, they had none in 
the summer — unless being happy is a religion. I 
gathered some new ideals from that family for the home 
which Margot and I were to build. 

In the spring-term of my second and last year in the 
school, we were given a course on the “Evidences of 
Christianity.” It was a formal affair, administered by 
an old Congregationalist preacher from the village, 
whom we called “Holy Sam.” He owed the nickname 
to his habit of pronouncing “psalm” to rhyme with 
“jam.” He always opened the Sunday Vesper ser- 
vice by saying: “We will begin our worship with a 
holy sam.” I think he took no more interest in the 
course than most of the boys did. It was assumed that 
we were all Christians and it was his rather thankless 
task to give us “reasonable grounds” for what we al- 
ready believed. 

It had the opposite effect on me. The book we used 


36 


A MAN’S WORLD 


for a text was principally directed against atheists. 
I had never heard of an atheist before, it was a great 
idea to me that there were people who did not believe 
in God. I had not doubted His existence. I had hated 
Him. The faith and love I had given Mary and Oliver 
had turned to disgust and loathing. Their existence 
I could not doubt, and God was only the least of this 
trinity. 

It would be an immense relief if I could get rid of 
my belief in God. The necessity of hate would be lifted 
from me. And so — with my eighteen-year-old intel- 
lect — I began to reason about Deity. 

The pendulxun of philosophy has swung a long way 
since I was a youth in school. To-day we are more 
interested in the subjective processes of devotion — what 
Tolstoi called the kingdom of God within us — than in 
definitions of an external, objective concept. The fine 
spun scholastic distinctions of the old denominational 
theologies are losing their interest. Almost all of us 
would with reverence agree Avith Rossetti: 

To God at best, to Chance at worst, 

Give thanks for good things last as first. 

But windstrown blossom is that good 
Whose apple is not gratitude. 

Even if no prayer uplift thy face 
Let the sweet right to render grace 
As thy soul’s cherished child be nurs’d. 

The Father’s generation held that a belief in God, as 
defined by the Westminster confession was more im- 
portant than any amount of rendering grace. I thought 
I was at war with God. Of course I was only fighting 
against the Father’s formal definition. 

Our text book, in replying to them, quoted the argu- 


A MAN’S WORLD 


37 


ments of Thomas Paine. The logic employed against 
him was weak and unconvincing. It was wholly based 
on the Bible. This was manifestly begging the question 
for if God was a myth, the scriptures were fiction. 
Nowadays, the tirades of Paine hold for me no more 
than historic interest. The final appeal in matters of 
j religion is not to pure reason. The sanction for “faith ” 
i escapes the formalism of logic. But at eighteen the 
i “Appeal to Reason” seemed unanswerable to me. 

I I began to lose sleep. As the spring advanced, I 

I found my room too small for my thoughts and I fell 

into the habit of slipping down the fire-escape and walk- 
ing through the night. There was an old mill-race 
; near the school and I used to pace up and down the 
dyke for hours. Just as with egg-stealing something 
pushed me into this and I worried very little about what 
i would happen if I were found out. 

1 After many nights of meditation I put my conclusions 
down on paper. I have kept the soiled and wrinkled 
' sheet, written over in a scragly boyish hand, ever 

! since. First of all there were the two propositions 

“There is a God,” “There is no God.” If there is a 
God, He might be either a personal Jehovah, such as 
the Father believed in, or an impersonal Deity like 
that of the theists. These were all the possibiUties 
I could think of. And in regard to these propositions, 
I wrote the following: 

“I cannot find any proof of a personal God. It 
would take strong evidence to make me beUeve in such 
a cruel being. How could an all-powerful God, who 
cared, leave His children in ignorance? There are many 
grown-up men who think they know what the Bible 
means. They have burned each other at the stake — 


38 


A MAN’S WORLD 


Catholics and Protestants — they would kill each other 
still, if there were not laws against it. A personal God 
would not let his followers fight about his meaning. 
He would speak clearly. If he could and did not, he 
would be a scoundrel. I would hate such a God. But 
there are no good arguments for a personal God. 

“An impersonal God would be no better than no 
God. He would not care about men. Such a God 
could not give us any law. Every person would have 
to find out for himself what was right. 

“If there is no God, it is the same as if there was an 
impersonal God. 

I “Therefore man has no divine rule about what is 
[good and bad. He must find out for himself. This 
experiment must be the aim of life — to find out what is 
good. I think that the best way to live would be so 
that the biggest number of people would be glad you 
did live.” 

Such was my credo at eighteen. It has changed very 
little. I do not believe — in many things. My philoso- 
phy is still negative. And life seems to me now, as it 
did then, an experiment in ethics. 

My midnight walks by the mill-race were brought to 
an abrupt end. My speculations were interrupted by 
the doctor’s heavy hand falling on my shoulder. 

“What are you doing out of bed at this hour? 
Smoking?” 

I was utterly confused, seeing no outlet but dis- 
grace. My very fright saved me. I could not collect 
my wits to lie. 

“Thinking about God,” I said. 

The doctor let out a long whistle and sat down be- 
side me. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


39 


“Was that what gave you brain fever?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well — tell me about it.” 

No good thing which has come to me since can com- 
pare with what the doctor did for me that night. For 
the first time in my life an adult talked with me seri- 
ously, let me talk. Grown-ups had talked to and at me 
without end. I had been told what I ought to believe. 
He was the first to ask me what I believed. It was 
perhaps the great love for him, which sprang up in my 
heart that night, which has made me in later life 
especially interested in such as he. 

I began at the beginning, and when I got to “Sal- 
vation” Milton, he interrupted me. 

“We’re smashing rules so badly to-night, we naight 
as well do more. I’m going to smoke. Want a cigar?” 

I did not smoke in those days. But the offer of 
that cigar, his treating me like an adult and equal, gave 
me a new pride in life, gave me courage to go through 
with my story, to tell about Oliver and Mary, to tell 
him of my credo. He sat there smoking silently and 
heard me through. 

“What do you think?” I asked at last, “Do you be- 
lieve in God?” 

“I don’t know. I never happened to meet him in 
any laboratory. It sounds to me like a fairy story.” 

“Then you’re an atheist,” I said eagerly. 

“No. A skeptic.” And he explained the difference. 

“How do you know what’s good and what’s bad?” 

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I only know that some 
things are comfortable and some aren’t. It is uncom- 
fortable to have people think you are a liar, especially 
so when you happen to be telling the truth. It is un- 


4U 


A MAN’S WORLD 


comfortable to be caught stealing. But I know some 
thieves who are uncaught and who seem quite com- 
fortable. Above all it’s uncomfortable to know you are 
a failme.” 

His voice trailed off wearily. It was several minutes 
before he began again. 

“I couldn’t tell you what’s right and what’s wrong — 
even if I knew. You don’t believe in God, why should 
you believe in me? If you don’t believe the Bible 
you mustn’t believe any book. No — that’s not what I 
mean. A lot of the Bible is true. Some of it we don’t 
believe, you and I. So with the other books — part 
true, part false. Don’t trust all of any book or any 
man.” 

“How can I know which part to believe?” 

“You’d be the wisest man in all the world, my boy, 
if you knew that,” he laughed. 

Then after a long silence, he spoke in a cold hard 
voice. 

“Listen to me. I’m not a good man to trust. I’m a 
failure.” 

He told me the pitiful story of his life, told it in 
an even, impersonal tone as though it were the history 
of someone else. He had studied in Germany, had come 
back to New York, a brilliant surgeon, the head of a 
large hospital. 

“I was close to the top. There wasn’t a man any- 
where near my age above me. Then the smash. It was 
a woman. You can’t tell what’s right and wrong in 
these things. Don’t blame that cousin of yours or the 
girl. If anybody ought to know it’s a doctor. I didn’t. 
It’s the hardest problem there is in ethics. The theo- 
logical seminaries don’t help. It’s stupid just to tell 


A MAN’S WORLD 


41 


men to keep away from it — sooner or later they don’t. 
And nobody can tell them what’s right. You wouldn’t 
understand my case if I told you about it. It finished 
me. I began to drink. Watch out for the drink. That’s 
sure to be uncomfortable. I was a drunkard — on the 
bottom. At last I heard about her again. She was com- 
ing down fast — towards the bottom. Well, I knew what 
the bottom was like — and I did not want her to know.” 

He smoked his cigar furiously for a moment before 
he went on. He had crawled out and sobered up. This 
school work and the village practice gave him enough 
to keep her in a private hospital. She had consumption. 

“And sometime — before very long,” he ended, “she 
will die and — well — I can go back to Forgetting-Land.” 

Of course I did not understand half what it meant. 
How I racked my heart for some word of comfort! 
I wanted to ask him to stay in the school and help other 
boys as he was helping me. But I could not find phrases. 
At last his cigar burned out and he snapped the stub 
into the mill-race. There was a sharp hiss, which 
sounded like a protest, before it sank under the water. 
He jumped up. 

“You ought to be in bed. A youngster needs sleep. 
Don’t worry your head about God. It’s more important 
for you to make the baseball team. Run along.” 

I had only gone a few steps when he called me back. 

“You know — if you should tell anyone, I might lose 
my position. I don’t care for myself — but be careful 
on her account. Goodnight.” 

He turned away before I could protest. His calling 
me back is the one cloud on my memory of him. His 
secret was safe. 

For the rest of the school year I gave my undivided 


42 


A MAN’S WORLD 


attention to baseball. The doctor was uniformly 
gruff to me. We did not have another talk. 

Two weeks before the school closed he disappeared. 
I knew that she had died, he would not have deserted 
his post while her need lasted. On Commencement 
Day, John, the apple-man, handed me a letter from 
him. I tore it up carefully after reading it, as he asked — 
threw the fragments out of the window of the train 
which was carrying me homeward. There was much 
to help me to clear thinking in that letter, but the most 
important part was advice about how to act towards 
the Father. “Don’t tell him your doubts now. It 
would only distress him. Wait till you’re grown up 
before you quarrel with him.” 

II 

Nothing of moment happened in the weeks I spent in 
camp meeting that summer. Luckily Mary was not 
there and Oliver, having finished the Seminary, was 
passing some months in Europe. I bore in mind the 
Doctor’s advice, avoided all arguments and mechan- 
ically observed the forms of that religious community. 
No one suspected my godlessness, but I suspected 
everyone of hypocrisy. It was a barren time of deceit. 

Even my correspondence with Margot gave me no 
pleasure. I could not write to her about my doubts, 
but I wanted very much to talk them over with her. 
While I could not put down on paper what was upper- 
most in my heart, I found it very hard to fill letters 
with less important things. Whenever I have been 
less than frank, I have always found it dolefully un- 
satisfactory. 

I imagine that most thoughtful boys of my genera- 


A MAN’S WORLD 


43 


tion were horribly alone. It is getting more the custom 
nowadays for adults to be friends with children. The 
Doctor at school was the only man in whom I had ever 
confided. And in my loneliness I looked forward 
eagerly to long talks with Margot. I supposed that 
love meant understanding. 

The serious sickness of the Mother took us home 
before the summer was ended. I had not been especially 
unhappy there during my childhood, but now that I 
had seen other pleasanter homes, my own seemed 
cruelly cheerless. Its gloom was intensified because 
the Mother was dying. I had had no special love for 
her but the thing was made harder for me by my lack 
of sympathy with their religious conventions. It was 
imperative that they should not question God’s will. 
The Mother did not want to die. The Father was, I 
am sure, broken-hearted at the thought of losing her. 
They kept up a brave attitude — to me it seemed a hol- 
low pretense — that God was being very good to them, 
that he was releasing her from the bondage of life, 
calling her to joy unspeakable. However much she 
was attached to things known — the Father, her absent 
son, the graves of her other children, the homely things 
of the parsonage, the few pieces of inherited silver, 
the familiar chairs — it was incumbent on her to ap- 
pear glad to go out into the unknown. 

It was my first encounter with death. How strange 
it is that the greatest of all commonplaces should 
always surprise us! What twist in our brains is it, 
that makes us try so desperately to ignore death? 
The doctors of philosophy juggle words over their 
Erkenntnis Theorie — tr3dng to discover the confines 
of human knowledge, trying to decide for us what 


44 


A MAN’S WORLD 


things are knowable and what we may not know — but 
above all their prattle, the fact of death stands out 
as one thing we all do know. Whether our tempera- 
ments incline us to reverence pure reason or to ac- 
cept empirical knowledge, we know, beyond cavil, that 
we must surely die. Yet what an amazing amount 
of mental energy we expend in trying to forget it. 

^ The result? W^e are all surprised and unnerved when 
this commonplace occurs. 

Christianity claims to have conquered death. For 
the elect, the Father taught, it is a joyous awakening. 
The people of the church scrupulously went through 
the forms which their creed imposed. Who can tell 
the reality of their thoughts? There is some validity 
in the theory of psychology which says that if you strike 
a man, you become angry; that if you laugh, it makes 
you glad. I would not now deny that they got some com- 
fort from their attitude. But at the time, tossing about 
in my stormy sea of doubts, it seemed to me that they 
were all afraid. Just as well disciplined troops will 
wheel and mark time and ground arms, go through all 
the familiar manoeuvres of the parade ground, while 
the shells of the enemy sweep their ranks with cold 
fear, so it seemed to me that these soldiers of Christ 
were performing rites for which they had lost all heart 
in an effort to convince themselves that they were not 
afraid. 

A great tenderness and pity came to me for the 
Mother. As I have said there had been little affection 
between us. All her love had gone out to Oliver. Yet 
in those last days, when she was so helpless, it seemed 
to comfort her if I sat by her bed-side and stroked her 
hand. Some mystic sympathy sprang up between us 


A MAN’S WORLD 


45 


and she felt no need of pretense before me. I sat there 
and watched sorrow on her face, hopeless grief, yes, 
and sometimes rebellion and fear. But with brave 
loyalty she hid it all when the Father came into the 
room, dried her tears and talked of the joy that was 
set before her. 

There was also a sorrow of my own. Disillusion- 
ment had come to me from Margot. Why I had ex- 
pected that she would sympathize with and under- 
stand my doubts, I do not know. It was a wild enough 
dream. 

The first night at home I went to see her. The fam- 
ily crowded about with many questions. A1 was at- 
tending a southern military academy and there were 
endless comparisons to be made between his school 
and mine. But at last Margot and I got free of them 
and off by ourselves in an arbor. She seemed older 
than I, the maturity which had come to her in these 
two years startled me. But I blurted out my troubles 
without preface. 

“Margot,” I said, “Do you believe everything in the 
Bible?” 

I suppose she was expecting some word of love. 
Two years before, when I had left her, I had kissed 
her. And now 

“Of course,” she said, in surprise. 

If she had doubted one jot or tittle of it, I might 
have been content. Her unthinking acceptation of it all 
angered me. 

“I don’t,” I growled. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean what I say. I don’t believe in the Bible.” 

I remember so well how she looked — there in the 


46 


A MAN’S WORLD 


arbor, where she had led me — her eyes wide with sur- 
prise and fear. I thought she looked stupid. 

“I don’t believe in God,” I went on. 

I expected her to take this announcement quietly. 
But two years before I had never heard of men who 
doubted the existence of God, except, of course, the be- 
nighted heathen. Margot’s hair is almost white now, 
but I suppose that in all her life, I am the only person 
she has heard question the teachings of the church. 

Now I realize the extent of my folly in expecting 
that she would understand. The two years I had been 
away had changed everything for me, even the mean- 
ing of the words I used. I had been out in a wider 
world than hers, had begun to meet the minds of men 
who thought. In that little mountain village, a second 
rate, rather mushy-brained rector had been her in- 
tellectual guide. It was insane for me to think she 
would sympathize with me. And yet, because I loved 
her, I did. I was only eighteen. 

How the fright grew in her eyes as I went on de- 
claiming my unbeliefs! 

“It’s wicked — what you are saying.” 

“It’s true. Is truth wicked?” 

“I won’t listen to you any more.” 

She got up. Suddenly I realized that I was losing 
her. 

“Margot,” I pleaded, “you mustn’t go. We’re 
going to get married. I’ve got to tell you what I 
think.” 

“I’ll never marry a man who doesn’t believe in 
God.” 

We were both very heroic. There was no older, 
wiser person there to laugh at us. So we stood and 


A MAN’S WORLD 


47 


glared at each other. She waited some minutes for 
me to recant. I could not. Then two tears started 
down her cheeks. I wanted desperately to say some- 
thing, but there were tears in my eyes also and no 
words would come. She turned and walked away. 
I could not believe it. I do not know how long I waited 
for her to come back. At last I went home. 

Sullen, bitter days followed. I suppose she hoped, 
as I did, that some way would be found to restore peace. 
But neither of us knew how. 

If I might have my way, I would first of all arrange 
life so that boys should escape such crises. Sooner 
or later, I suppose, every human being comes to a 
point where to compromise means utter damnation. 
But if I could remould this “sorry scheme of things,” 
I would see that this portentous moment did not come 
till maturity. A Frenchman has said that after thirty 
we all become cynics. It is a vicious saying, but holds 
a tiny grain of truth. As we get older we become in- 
different, cynical, in regard to phrases. The tragedy 
of youth is that it rarely sees beyond words. And of 
jll futilities, it seems to me that quarrels over the terms 
with which we strive to express our mysticism — our 
religion, if you will — are the most futile. At eighteen 
I let a tangle of words crash into, smash, my love. 
Youth is cruel — above all to itself. 

The mother’s funeral seemed to me strangely un- 
real. It was hard to find the expected tears, and the 
black mourning clothes were abhorrent. I felt that I 
was imprisoned in some foul dungeon and was stifling 
for lack of air. 

Release came with time for me to start to College. 
There was a lump in my throat as I climbed into the 


48 


A MAN’S WORLD 


buckboard, beside the negro boy who was to drive me 
down to the county seat for the midnight train. 
The Father reached up and shook my hand and hoped 
that the Lord would have me in His keeping and then 
we turned out through the gate into the main street 
I saw the Father standing alone in the doorway and 1 
knew he was praying for me. I felt that I would never 
come back. I was sorry for the Father in the big 
empty house, but I had no personal regret, except 
Margot. The memory of the former leave-taking, 
how with her I had found the first realization of love, 
the first vague sensing of the mystic forces of life, 
came back to me sharply. All through the two years 
she had been a constant point in my thinking. I had 
not mooned about her sentimentally, more often than 
not, in the rush of work or play, I had not thought of 
her at all. But the vision of her had always been there, 
back in the holy of holies of my brain, a thing which 
was not to change nor fade. 

The Episcopal Church was lit up, as we drove by I 
could hear some laughter. I knew they were decorating 
it for a wedding. Margot would be there, for she was 
one of the bride’s maids. As soon as we were out of 
the village I told the negro boy I had forgotten some- 
thing and jumping out, I walked back into the woods 
and circled round to the side of the church. I put a 
board up under a window and looked in. There were 
other people there, but I saw only Margot. She was 
sitting apart from the laughter, weaving a wreath of 
ground-pine for the lectern. Her face was very sad. 
Of course she knew I was going away, everyone knows 
such things in a little village. But she held her head 
high. If I had called her out onto the steps, she would 


A MAN’S WORLD 


49 


have asked me once more to recant. I knew it was 
irrevocable. The fates had made us too proud. 

I slipped down from my perch and made my way back 
to the buckboard. There was a wild west wind blow- 
ing, it howled and shrieked through the pines and I 
caught some of its fierce exultation. The summer 
had been bitter beyond words. The full life before me 
called, the life without need of hypocrisy. 

When at last I was on the train, and felt the jar as 
it started, I walked forward into the smoking car. As a 
symbol of my new liberty, as reverently as if it had been 
a sacrament to the Goddess of Reason, I lit a cigarette. 
The tears were very close to my eyes as I sat there and 
smoked. But the pride of martyrdom held them back. 
Was I not giving up even Margot for the Cause of 
Truth? 


Ill 

The College was set on a hill top, overlooking a 
broad fair valley. There was none of the rugged gran- 
deur of our Tennessee Mountains, it was a softer land- 
scape than my home country offered. But the greatest 
difference lay in the close packed, well tilled fields. 
Here and there were patches of woods, but no forest. 
It was an agricultural country. 

If I should set out to construct a heaven, I would 
build it on the lines of that old campus. Whenever 
nowadays I am utterly tired and long for rest, the 
vision comes to me of those ivy grown buildings and 
the rows of scrawny poplars. It is my symbol for light- 
hearted joy and contentment. The doleful shadow of 
my home did not reach so far, and I was more carefree 
there than I have ever been elsewhere. 


50 


A MAN’S WORLD 


I joined heartily in the student life, played a fair 
game of football and excelled in the new game of ten- 
nis. There is a period at the end of adolescence when 
if ever, you feel an exuberance of animal well-being, 
when it is a pride to be able to lift a heavier weight than 
your neighbor, when it is a joy to feel your muscles 
ache with fatigue, when your whole being is open- 
ing up to a new sensation for which you know no name. 
I remember glorious tramps in the deep winter snow, 
as I look back on them I know that the thrilling zest, 
which then seemed to me intimately coimected with 
the muscles of my thighs and back, was the dawning 
realization of the sheer beauty of the world. I spent 
this period at college. I suppose that is why I love the 
place. 

From the first only one subject of study interested 
me. It was not on the freshman year’s curriculum. 
By some twist of fate “Anglo-Saxon” appealed to me 
vividly. I suppose it was an outgrowth from my boy- 
ish fondness for Malory’s “Morte d’ Arthur.” In the 
library I found many books in the crabbed Old English 
of the earliest chronicles. They still seem to me the 
most fascinating which have ever been written. I 
deciphered some of them with ease. Before I could 
get the meat out of the others I had to master a gram- 
mar of Anglo-Saxon. All my spare moments were spent 
among the shelves. My classroom work was poorly 
done. But among the books I came into close contact 
with Professor Meer, the librarian and head of the 
English Literature Department. His specialty was 
Chaucer, but my interest ran back to an even earlier 
date. He was my second adult friend and many an 
evening I spent in his home. But our talk was always 


A MAN’S WORLD 


61 


of literature rather than of life, of the very early 
days, when there were no traditions nor conventions 
and each writer was also a discoverer. 

A phase of life which had never before troubled me 
began to occupy considerable of my thought. My 
attention was drawn to the women question by the talk 
of the football men. There were two very distinct 
groups among the athletes; the Y. M. C. A. men and 
the others. It was inevitable that I should feel hostile 
to the former. They used the phrases, spoke the lan- 
guage of the Camp Meeting. With great pain and 
travail I had fought my way free from all that. Many 
of them were perhaps estimable fellows, I do not know. 
I did not get well acquainted with any of them. But 
I was surprised to find myself often ill at ease with the 
others. Their talk was full of vague hints which I 
seldom understood. They had come to college very 
much more sophisticated than I. In the quest for 
manly wisdom, I read a book on sex-matters, which I 
found in my fraternity house. 

It taught me very little. I have seen dozens of such 
books since and I cannot understand the spirit in which 
they are written. In the effort to be clean spirited and 
scientific the authors have fallen over backwards and 
have told their readers almost nothing at all. It was 
like a book which described the mechanism of a print- 
ing press without one word about its use or place in 
life. A printing press is a very lifeless thing unless one 
has some comprehension that not so much in itself 
but in its vast utility it is the most wonderful thing 
which man has made. The book which fell into my 
hands, described in detail, in cold blooded and rather 
revolting phraseology, the physiology of sex, but it 


52 


A MAN’S WORLD 


gave no hint of its psychologic or social significance, 
it did not even remotely suggest that sooner or later 
everyone who read it would have to deal with sex as a 
problem of personal ethics. It was a poor manual for 
one just entering manhood. 

I had never been told anything about sex. I judged 
from the witticisms of the gymnasium that the others 
had discussed these matters a great deal in their pre- 
paratory schools. And with the added knowledge of 
later years, I am persuaded that my school had been 
unusually clean spirited. I never heard the boys talk- 
ing of such things, and if any of them were getting into 
bad habits, they did it privately. 

These college men boasted. Of course I hid my ig- 
norance with shame. As the football season wore on 
the talk became more explicit. Some of the team, 
after the Thanksgiving Day game, with our rival 
college, which ended the season, were “going into town 
to raise hell.” The Y. M. C. A. men expected to 
“come right home.” A week or so before the last game, 
Bainbridge, our captain and a senior, showed some of 
us a letter which a girl in town had written him. The 
other fellows who saw the letter thought it hilariously 
funny. To me it seemed strange and curious. A woman, 
who could have written it was something entirely 
foreign to my experience. 

Thanksgiving night — we had won the game — all of 
us, but the Y. M. C. A. men, went into town for a din- 
ner and celebration. I happened to be the only man 
from my fraternity on the football team, and, when the 
dinner broke up, I found myself alone. My head was 
swimming a bit and I remember walking down the main 
street, trying to recall whether or not I had decided to 


A MAN’S WORLD 


53 


launch out on this woman adventure. I was sure I 
had not expected to be left to my own resources. I 
was making my way towards the station to catch a 
train back to college, when I fell in with some of the 
fellows. They annexed me at once. Down the street 
we went, roaring out the Battle Cry of Freedom. They 
had an objective but every barroom we passed distracted 
their attention. It was the first time I had ever ap- 
proached the frontier of sobriety — that night I went 
far over the line. Out of the muddle of it all, I re- 
member being persuaded to climb some dark stairs 
and being suddenly sobered by the sight of a roomful 
of women. I may have been so befuddled that I am 
doing them an injustice, but no women ever seemed to 
me so nauseatingly ugly. Despite the protest of my 
friends, I bolted. 

It is not a pleasant experience to relate, but it kept 
me from what might easily have been worse. I had 
missed the last train. Not wanting to spend the night 
in a hotel, nor to meet my fellows on the morning train, 
I walked the ten miles out to college. Somehow the 
sight of those abhorrent women had driven all the 
fumes of alcohol from my brain. In the cold, crisp 
night, under the low hanging lights of heaven, I felt 
myself more clear minded than usual. As sharply as 
the stars shone overhead, I realized that I had no busi- 
ness with such debauch. It was not that I took any 
resolution, only I understood beyond question that such 
things had no attraction to me. 

It is something I do not understand. The Father had 
taught me that many things were sinful. But I do not 
think there was anything in my training to lead me to 
feel that drunkenness and debauch were any worse 


54 


A MAN’S WORLD 


than card-playing. Yet I learned to play poker with a 
light heart. It was the same with theatre going and 
dancing. He had very much oftener warned me 
against these things than against drunkenness. The 
best explanation I can find, although it does not en- 
tirely satisfy me, is that vulgar debauch shocked some 
aesthetic, rather than moral instinct. It was not the 
thought of sin which had driven me to run away from 
those women, but their appalling ugliness. 

Towards the end of the spring term, the long-delayed 
quarrel with the Father came to a head. I forget the 
exact cause of the smash-up, perhaps it was smok- 
ing. I am sure it commenced over some such lesser 
thing. But once the breach was open there was no 
chance of patching it up. In the half dozen letters 
which passed between us, I professed my heresies with 
voluminous underlinings. I had only one idea, to 
finish forever with pretense and hypocrisy. 

I was foolish — and cruel. I did not appreciate 
the Father’s love for me, nor realize his limitations. 
He was sure he was right. His whole intellectual 
system was based on an abiding faith. From the view- 
point of the new Pragmatic philosophy, he had tested 
his “truth” by a long fife and had found it good. Per- 
haps in his earlier days he had encountered skepticism, 
but since early manhood, since he had taken up his 
pastorate, all his association had been with people who 
were mentally his inferiors. He was more than a 
“parson,” he was the wise-man, not only of our little 
village, but of the country side. All through the moun- 
tains his word carried conclusive weight. Inevitably 
he had become cock-sure and dogmatic. It was humanly 
impossible for him to argue with a youth like me. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


55 


In my narrow, bitter youth, I could not see this. I 
might have granted his sincerity, if he had granted 
mine. But for him to assume that I loved vice because 
I doubted certain dogma, looked to me like cant. But 
the men he knew, who were not “professing Christians,” 
were drunkards or worse. He really believed that 
Robert Ingersoll was a man of unspeakable depravity. 
He could not conceive of a man leading an upright life 
without the aid of Christ. Peace between us was im- 
possible. His ultimatum was an effort to starve me 
into repentance. “ My income,” he wrote, “comes from 
believers who contribute their mites for the carrying 
on of the work of Christ. It would be a sin to allow 
you to squander it on riotous living.” 

So my college course came to an end. 

IV 

In one regard tne fairies who attended my christen- 
ing were marvelously kind to me. They gave me the 
gift of friends. It is the thing above all others which 
makes me reverent, makes me wish for a god to thank. 
There is no equity in the matter. I am convinced 
that it is what the Father would have called “an act of 
grace.” Always, in every crisis, whenever the need 
has arisen, a friend has stepped beside me to help me 
through. 

So it was when the Father cut off my allowance. 
Utterly ignorant of the life outside, I was not so 
frightened by my sudden pennilessness as I should 
have been, as I would be to-day. Work was found for 
me. My friend. Prof. Meers discovered that he needed 
an assistant to help him on a bibliography which he 
was preparing. He offered me a modest salary — enouglj 


56 


A MAN’S WORLD 


to live comfortably. So I stayed on in the college town, 
living in the fraternity house. 

The library work interested me more than my study 
had done. Even the routine detail of it was not bad 
and I had much time to spend on the Old English 
which fascinated me. I was not ambitious and would 
have been content to spend my life in that peaceful, 
pleasant town. But Prof. Meers had other plans for 
me. Back of my indolent interest in old books, he 
was optimistic enough to see a promise of great schol- 
arship. He was better as a critic of literature than as a 
judge of men. He continually made plans for me. 
I paid scant attention to them until almost a year had 
passed and we were beginning to see the end of the work 
he could offer me. I began to speculate with more 
interest about what I would do next. 

Without telling me about it. Prof. Meers wrote to 
the head of a New York Library, whom he knew and 
secured a position for me. When he received the news 
he came to me with a more definite plan than I would 
ever have been able to work out for myself. He knew 
that a certain publishing house wanted to bring out 
a text book edition of “Ralph Roister Doister.” He 
had given them my name and I was to prepare the 
manuscript during my free hours. This he told me 
would not bring me much money, but some reputation 
and would make it easier for him to find other openings 
for me, where I could develop my taste for Old English. 
I caught some of his enthusiasm and set out for my new 
work with high hopes. 

Of my first weeks in the city there is little memory 
left except of a disheartening search for a place to live. 
After much tramping about I took a forlorn hall bed- 


A IVIAN’S WORLD 


57 


room in a not over peaceful family. The quest for an 
eating place was equally unsatisfactory. 

In the library I was put to uninteresting work in 
the Juvenile Department. But there, handling books 
in words of one syllable, I found a new and disturbing 
outlook on life. There was more jealousy than friend- 
ship among my fellow employees. The chances of ad- 
vancement were few, the competition keen — and new 
to me. I did not understand the hostility, which 
underlies the struggle for a living. Once I remember 
I found a carefully compiled sheet of figures, which 
I had prepared for my monthly report, torn to bits in 
my waste paper basket. Another time some advice, 
which I afterwards discovered to have been intention- 
ally misleading, sent me off on a wild goose chase, 
wasted half a day and brought me a reprimand from the 
chief. Such things were incomprehensible to me at 
first. It took some time to realize that the people about 
me were afraid of me, afraid that I might win favor 
and be advanced over their heads. I resented their 
attitude, but gradually, by a word dropped here and 
there, I learned how a dollar a week more or less was a 
very vital matter to most of them. One girl in my de- 
partment had a mother to support and was trying 
desperately to keep a brother in school. There was a 
man whose wife was sick, the doctor’s and druggist’s 
bills were a constant terror to him. Very likely if I 
had been in their place, I would have done the little, 
mean things they did. Life began to wear a new aspect 
of sombreness to me. I could not hope for advance- 
ment without trampling on someone. 

By temperament I was utterly unfitted for this 
struggle. My desire for life was so weak that such 


58 


A MAN’S WORLD 


shameful, petty hostilities seemed an exorbitant price 
to pay for it. I would much rather not have been born 
than struggle in this manner to live. I began to look 
about eagerly for some other employment. But I 
could find none which did not bear the same taint. 

However it was there in that library that I en- 
countered Norman Benson. He was near ten years 
older than I, tall and loose jointed. His face, very 
heavily lined, reminded me of our Tennessee moun- 
taineers. But the resemblance went no farther. He 
was a city product, bred in luxury and wealth. He 
was variously described by the people of the library 
as “a saint,” “a freak,” “a philanthropist,” “a crank.” 
The chief called him “a bore.” He was the idol of 
the small boys who ran errands for us and put the books 
back on the shelves. He gave them fat Egyptian 
cigarettes out of his silver case, to their immense de- 
light and to the immense horror of Miss Dilly, who 
had the boys in charge. 

His hobby, as he soon explained to me, was “a 
circulating library that really circulates.” He had a 
strange language, a background of Harvard English, 
a foreground of picturesque slang — all illumined by 
flashes of weird profanity. Of course I cannot recall 
his words, but his manner of speaking I shall never 
forget. 

“They call this a circulating library,” he would 
shout. “Hell! It never moves an inch. It’s station- 
ary! Instead of going out around the town, it sits 
here and waits for people to come. And the people 
don’t come. Not on your life! Only a few have the 
nerve to face out all this imposing architecture and red- 
tape. If there is anything to discourage readers, they 


A MAN’S WORLD 


59 


don’t do it because they’ve been too stupid to think 
of it. If a stranger comes in and asks for a book they 
treat him like a crook. Ask him impertinent questions 
about his father’s occupation. Won’t let him take a 
book unless he can get some tax-payer to promise to 
pay for it if he steals it! What in thunder has that got 
to do with it? Someone wants to read. They ought 
to send up an Hosanna! They ought to go out like 
postmen, and leave a book at each door every morning. 
Circulating? Rot ! ’ ’ 

He had given his time and money for a year or two to 
bring about this reform. At first he had met with cold 
indifference. But he stuck to his point. He had put 
up his money as guarantees for any books which might 
be lost. He had persuaded half a dozen or more school 
teachers to distribute books among their scholars 
and the parents, paying them out of his own pocket 
for the extra work. He had established branches in 
several mission churches and in one or two saloons. 

“That corpse of a librarian,” he explained to me, 
“had the fool idea that his job was to preserve books — 
to pickle them! I’ve been trying to show him that every 
book he has on his shelves gathering dust, is money 
wasted, that his job is to keep them moving. The city’s 
books ought to be in the homes of the tax-payers — not 
locked up in a library. The very idea horrified him 
at first. He was afraid the books would get dirty. 
Good Lord! What’s the best end that can come to a 
book, I’d like to know? It ought to fall to pieces from 
much reading. For a book to be eaten by worms is a 
sin. I’ve been hammering at him, until he’s beginning 
to see the light. He don’t cry any more if a book has 
to be rebound.” 


60 


A MAN’S WORLD 


Indeed, the '‘hammering” process had been effective. 
That year the chief read a paper at the National Con- 
gress on “Library Extension.” Of course he took all 
the credit; boasted how the idea had come from his 
library and so forth. But Benson cared not at all for 
that. His plan had been accepted and he was content. 

He interested me immensely. Why did a man with a 
large income spend his time, rushing about trying to 
make people read books they did not care enough for 
to come after? I could get no answer from him. He 
would switch away from the question into a panegyric 
on reading. It was a frequent expression of his that 
“reading is an invention of the last half century.” 

“Of course,” he would qualify, “the aristocracy has 
enjoyed reading much longer. But the people? They’ve 
just learned how. The democratization of books is 
the most momentous social event in the history of the 
world. Think of it! More people read an editorial 
in the newspaper within twenty-four hours than could 
possibly have read Shakespeare during his entire life. 
There are dozens of single books which have had a 
larger edition than all the imprints of Elizabethan 
literature put together. Don’t you see the immensity 
of it? It means that people all over the world will be 
able to think of the same thing at the same time. It 
means a social mind. Plato lived in his little corner 
of the world and his teachings lived by word of mouth 
and manuscripts. Only a few people could read them, 
fewer still could afford to buy them. ‘Uncle Tom’s 
Cabin’ swept across the country in a couple of years. 
Think how long it took Christianity to spread — a 
couple of hundred miles a century. And then think 
of the theory of evolution! It has captxired the world 


A MAN’S WORLD 


61 


in less than a generation! That’s what books mean. 
We’re just entering the epoch of human knowledge 
as compared to the old learning of individuals. It’s 
gigantic! Wonderful! 

Benson, like many another, took a liking to me. I 
was lonely enough in that library. And finding no 
sympathy elsewhere, I improved every opportunity 
to talk with him. 

One evening he asked me to come home with him to 
dinner. I accepted gladly, being more than tired of my 
pallid little room, and the sloppy restaurant where I 
ate. An evening with this rich young man, seemed at- 
tractive indeed. To my surprise he led the way to a 
downtown Bowery car. I did not know the city well 
and I thought perhaps this dismal street led to some 
fairer quarter. But the further we went the grimmer 
became the neighborhood. It was my first visit to the 
slums. 

We got off at Stanton Street. It is so familiar to me 
now — ^with its dingy unloveliness, the squalor of its tene- 
ments, its crowding humanity, and the wonder that 
people can laugh in such a place — that it is hard to recall 
how it looked that first time. I think the thing which im- 
pressed me most was the multitude of children. Clear- 
est of all I remember stepping over a filthy baby. It 
lay flat on its back, sucking an apple core and stared 
up at me with a strange disinterestedness. It did not 
seem to be afraid I would step on it. I wanted to stop 
and set the youngster to one side, out of the way. 
But I felt that I would look foolish. I did not know 
where to take hold of it. And Benson strode on down 
the street without noticing it. 

A couple of blocks further, we came to a dwelling 


62 


A MAN’S WORLD 


house with flower boxes in the windows. A brass-plate 
on the door bore the inscription, “The Children’s 
House.” So I was introduced to the Social Settlement. 
They were novelties in those days. 

A tumult of youngsters swarmed about us as we en- 
tered. A sweet faced young woman was trying to drive 
them out, explaining with good natured vexation that 
they had over-stayed their time and would not go. 
They clambered all over Benson, but somehow he was 
more successful than the young woman in persuading 
them to go home. Her name, when Benson introduced 
me, gave me a start. It recalled a fantastic newspaper 
story of a millionaire’s daughter who had left her dia- 
monds and yachts to live among the poor. I had sup- 
posed her some sallow-faced, nun-like creature. I 
found her to be vibrantly alive, not at all a recluse. 

The Settlement consisted of a front and rear tene- 
ment. The court between had been turned into a 
pleasant garden. With the hollyhocks along the walls 
and the brilliant beds of geraniums it was a strangely 
beautiful place for that crowded district. The men’s 
quarters were in the back building. Benson had two 
rooms on the top floor, a small monastic bedroom and a 
larger study. It surprised me more than the court- 
yard. It was startling to And the atmosphere of a col- 
lege dormitory in the center of the slums. The books, 
the fencing foils, the sofa-pillows in the window-seat — 
after my months in a furnished room — ^made me home- 
sick for my fraternity house. 

Downstairs in the cheery dining room, I met the staff 
of “Residents.” The Rev. James Dawn, an English- 
man, was the Head Worker. He was a graduate of 
Oxford and had been associated with Arthur Toynbee 


A MAN’S WORLD 


63 


in the first London Settlement. His wife, also English, 
sat at the foot of the table. Benson introduced me 
rapidly to the others. “Miss Blake — District Nurse,” 
“Miss Thompson — Kindergartner,” “Long, Instructor 
in Sociology in the University,” “Dr. Platt — of the 
Health Department.” I did not begin to get the labels 
straight. 

It was a very much better dinner than I could get in 
any restaurant, better than the food I had had at Col- 
lege and school. But the thing which impressed me 
most was the whizz of sharp, intellectual — often witty — 
conversation. The discussion centered on one of the 
innumerable municipal problems. I was ashamed of 
my inability to contribute to it. 

It was to me a wonderfully attractive group of 
people. They enjoyed all which seemed most desir- 
able in college life and added to this was a strange 
magnetic earnestness, I did not understand. I saw 
them relaxed. But even in their after-dinner con- 
versation, over their coffee cups and cigarettes, there 
was an undercurrent of seriousness which hinted at 
some vital contact with an unknown reality. I was 
like an Eskimo looking at a watch, I could not com- 
prehend what made the hands go round. I could see 
their actions, but not the stimuli from which they re- 
acted. I knew nothing of misery. 

That evening set my mind in a whirl. It was an ut- 
terly new world I had seen. I had never thought of the 
slums except as a distressful place to live. Stanton 
Street was revolting. I did not want to see it again. 
And yet I could not shake myself free from the thought 
of it— of it and of the strange group I had met in the 
Children’s House. There seemed to be something 


64 


A MAN’S WORLD 


fateful about it, something I must look at without 
flinching and try to understand. 

On the other hand some self-defensive instinct made 
me try to forget it. The distaste for the struggle for 
life which had come to me from experiencing the petty 
jealousies of the library was turned into a dumb, vague 
fear by the sight of the slum. I turned to “Ralph 
Roister Doister” — on which I had made only listless 
progress — with a new ardor. The only escape which I 
could see from perplexing problems of life lay in a 
career of scholarship. 

The Old English which had formerly been an amuse- 
ment for me, now seemed a means of salvation. When 
Benson next suggested that I spend the evening with 
him, I excused myself on the ground of work. 

But very often as I sat at my table, burning the mid- 
night oil over that century old farce, the vision of that 
baby of Stanton Street, sucking the piece of garbage, 
came between me and my page. And I felt some shame 
in trying to drive him away. It was as though a chal- 
lenging gauntlet had been thrown at my feet which I 
must needs pick up and face out the fight, or commit 
some gross surrender. I tried to escape the issue, with 
books. 


BOOK III 
I 

Not long after this visit to the slums, when I had 
been in the city a little more than a year, I received a 
new offer of employment, through the kindness of 
Professor Meer. The work was to catalogue, and edit 
a descriptive bibliography of a large collection of early 
English manuscripts and pamphlets. A rich manu- 
facturer of tin cans had bought them and intended to 
give them to some college library. 

It offered just the escape I was looking for. I wrote 
at once, in high spirits, to accept it. However some 
cold water was thrown on my glee by Norman Benson. 
He was my one friend in the library and I hastened to 
tell him the good news. But when he read the letter 
he was far from enthusiastic. 

“Are you going to accept it?” he asked coldly. 

“Of course,” I replied, surprised at his tone. “I 
hardly hoped for such luck, at least not for many 
years. It’s a great chance.” 

“This really interests me,” he said, laying down 
the books he was carrying and sitting on my desk. 
“What earthly good,” he went on, “do you think it’s 
going to do anyone to have you diddle about with these 
old parchments?” 

“Why. It ” I began glibly enough, but I was 

not prepared for the question. And, realizing suddenly 
that I had not considered this aspect of the case, I 
left my response unfinished. 

65 


66 


A MAN’S WORLD 


“I haven’t a bit of the scholastic temperament,” he 
said, after having waited long enough to let me try to 
find an answer. “ It’s just one of the many things I 
don’t understand. I wouldn’t deny that any bit of 
scholarship, however ‘dry-as-dust,’ may be of some use. 
I don’t doubt that a good case of this kind could be 
made for the study of medieval literature. I don’t 
say it’s absolutely useless. But relatively it seems — 
well — uninteresting to me. It’s in the same class as 
astronomy. You could study the stars till you were 
black in the face and you wouldn’t find anything wrong 
with them, and if you did you couldn’t make it right. 
Astronomy has been of some practical use to us, at 
least it helps us regulate our watches. But how in the 
devil do you expect to wring any usefulness out of 
Anglo-Saxon? Don’t you want to be useful?” 

His scorn for my specialty ruffled my temper. 

“What would you suggest for me to do? Social- 
Settlement-ology? ” I replied with elaborate irony. 

But if he caught the note of anger in my retort, he 
was too busy with his own ideas to pay any attention 
to it. He got off the table and paced up and down like 
a caged beast, as he always did when he was wrestling 
with a problem. In a moment he came back and sat 
down. 

“You don’t answer my question,” he said sharply. 
“You can stand on your dignity and say I have no 
right to ask it. But that’s rot! I’m serious and I give 
you the credit of thinking you are. Now you propose 
to turn your back on the world and go into a sort of 
monastery. This job is just a beginning. You’re 
making your choice between men and books, between 
human thought that is alive and the kind that’s been 


A MAN’S WORLD 


67 


preserved like mummies. Why? I ask. What is 
there in these old books which can compare in interest 
to the life about us. Truth is not only stranger than 
fiction, it is more dramatic, more comic, more tragic, 
more beautiful. Even Shelley never wrote a lyric 
hke some you can see with your own eyes, perhaps feel. 
I hke to know what makes people do things. I’d like 
to know what makes you accept this offer. I assume 
that you want to be useful to your day and generation. 
What utility do you hope to serve in tabulating these old 
books, which nobody but a few savants will ever read? ” 

I was entirely unprepared to answer his question. 
And I felt myself sink in his estimation. Why was I 
reaching out for the life of a bookworm with such eager- 
ness? I understand now. I was a coward. I was still 
sore from the wounds of my childish endeavor to com- 
prehend God. I was afraid of life. I was afraid of 
the little child sucking the apple core on Stanton Street. 
The life about me, of which Benson spoke so enthu- 
siastically, seemed to me threatening. It evidently 
laid an obligation of warfare on the people who entered 
it actively. I wanted peace. Books seemed to me a 
sort of city of refuge. 

My new employer, Mr. Perry, the tin-can man, was a 
strange type. He had grown up in a fruit preserving 
industry and at thirty-odd he had invented a method 
of crimping the tops onto cans, without the use of solder. 
Good luck had given him an honest business partner 
and the patent had made a fortune for both of them. 
When the first instalment of royalties had come in. 
Perry had stopped stirring the kettle of raspberry 
preserves and had not done a stroke of work since. 
At forty he had built a “mansion” in the city and had 


68 


A MAN’S WORLD 


gone in for politics. He bought his way to a seat in the 
State Senate, only to find that it bored him to ex- 
tinction. After several other fads had proved unin- 
teresting, he had set his heart on a LL.D. A friend 
had advised him to donate a valuable collection of 
books to some college. 

He had sent a large check to a London dealer and 
this heterogeneous mass had been the result. As his 
interest in the matter had been only momentary he 
was decidedly penurious about it after the first outlay. 
That, I suppose, is why I, instead of a recognized 
authority, was chosen for the work. He had no idea 
what the catalogue should be like, and his one instruc- 
tion to me, was to make it “something scholarly.” 

There was in his monstrous mansion an apartment 
originally designed for the children’s tutor. But there 
had never been any children. These quarters were 
given to me. There was a private entrance, a bed- 
room, bath and study, where my meals were served, 
and there was a stairway down to the library. 

In the three years I worked for him I did not see 
him ten times. His wife was dead, he lived away a good 
deal and, to my great satisfaction, he never invited 
me to his bachelor parties — the reverberations of which 
sometimes shook me out of sleep. Once every six 
months or so he would bring an expert to look over my 
work. As they found no fault and he could not under- 
stand it, he was convinced that it was scholarly. 

It was a period of great content for me. The rut 
into which I fell was deep indeed. I saw no one. Al- 
most my only contact with others was by mail. And 
my letters all related to my specialty. Eight full hours 
I worked in the library. The architect had not expected 


A MAN’S WORLD 


69 


Mr. Perry to do much reading and, the windows being 
few, the room was gloomy. I had often to use artificial 
light. At five I went for an hour’s walk in the park. 
At least this was my theory. But the least inclemency 
was an excuse to take some manuscript up to my room, 
to my shaded lamp and open fire. The daily eight 
hours on the catalogue was only a beginning. As soon 
as I had finished my edition of “Ralph Roister-Doister,” 
I began a monograph on Anglo-Saxon Roots. My 
ambition was to win a fellowship in an English Uni- 
versity. By the time my catalogue was finished, I 
would have enough money put by for a yea r or more of 
study in Oxford. My life was mapped out. 

II 

The darkness came unexpectedly. 

Sometimes my eyes had been tired, but I had not 
taken it seriously. One afternoon, as I laid out a 
sheet of paper on the desk, the page was suddenly 
obscured by a dancing spider-web — a dizzying con- 
tortion of black and white — growing denser and denser. 
I clapped my hands over my eyes and felt so sudden a 
relief I was afraid to take them away again. 

I got up slowly and felt my way with my foot to an 
easy chair. How long I sat there, my hands pressed 
hard against my eyes, I do not know. I had read 
somewhere of a man going blind with just such symp- 
toms. It was fear unspeakable, fear that made me 
laugh. When one feels that the gods are witty it is a 
bad sign. 

I was suddenly calm. It was accepted. I thought 
for a few minutes, my eyes still shut, and then felt my 
way to the telephone. 


70 


A MAN’S WORLD 


“Central,” I said, and I remember that my voice 
was calm and commonplace. “Will you give me the 
Eye and Ear Hospital? I can’t look up the number. 
I’m blind.” 

“Sure,” came back the answer. “It must be hard to 
be blind.” 

A clutch came to my throat. It comes to me now as 
I write about it, comes every time I hear people com- 
plaining that modern industry has robbed our life of all 
humanity, has turned us into mechanisms. Such talk 
makes me think of the sudden sympathy which came 
to me out of the machine. Whenever I am utterly blue 
and discouraged, I go into a telephone booth. 

“Hello, Central,” I say, “tell me something cheer- 
ful. I’m down on my luck.” 

It has never failed. Always some joking sympathy 
has come out of the machine and helped me to get right 
again. 

When the doctor came, he looked a minute at my 
desk, at the whole eye-straining mass of faded print 
and notes. He snapped on the electric light. 

“I suppose you work a lot in this fiendish glare?” 

“I need a strong light,” I said. 

He grunted in disgust. 

“This will hurt,” he said, as he made me sit 
down near the electric light, “but you’ve got to 
bear it.” 

He fixed a little mirror on his forehead and flashed 
the cruel ray into my eye. Back somewhere in the 
brain it focussed and burned. The sweat broke out 
all over me. 

“Now the other eye.” 

I flinched for a moment, holding my hand before it. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


71 


“Come, come,” he said gruffly, and I took my hand 
away. 

When the ordeal was over, he tied a black bandage 
over my eyes, laid me down on the lounge and lectmed 
me. When he stopped for breath, I interrupted. 

“WThat hope is there?” 

He hesitated. 

‘ Oh! Tell me the truth.” 

“Well — I guess the chances are even — of your 
seeing enough for ordinary work. But they will never 
be strong. You’ll have to give up books. You must 
keep your eyes bandaged — complete rest — six weeks — 
then we can tell how much damage you’ve done. It 
is only a guess now.” 

We talked business. I had enough money saved for a 
private room and good treatment, so he put me into a 
cab and told the driver to deliver me at the hospital. 

It was an appalling experience, that ride. Try it 
yourself. Ride through the streets with your eyes 
darkened: you will hear a thousand sounds you never 
heard before, even familiar sounds will be fearsome. 
Every jolt, every stoppage will seem momentous. I 
was glad the doctor did not come with me, glad that 
no one saw me so afraid. 

At last we stopped and I heard the cabby call. 

“Hey! there. Come out and take this man.” 

I revolted at my helplessness, pushed the door open 
and stumbled as I stepped out. I would have fallen 
heavily, if an orderly had not been there to catch me. 

“You must be careful at first. Mister,” he said. 
“You’ll get used to it in time.” 

That was just what I was afraid of — ^getting used to 
the darkness! 


n 


A MAN’S WORLD 


However, his words jogged my pride. The ways of 
the gods seemed funny to me again, and I joked with 
him as he led me up some stairs and into a receiving 
room. The house surgeon, to me only a voice, was 
nervously cheerful. He kept sa3dng, “It’ll be all right.” 
“It’ll be all right.” He seemed to be dancing about in 
all directions. My ears had not become accustomed to 
locating sounds. I suppose he moved about normally, 
but he seemed to talk from a different angle every 
time. 

“This is Miss Barton,” he said at last. “She is day 
nurse in your ward. She’ll make you comfortable.” 

Mechanically I thrust my hand out into the darkness. 
It was met and grasped by something I knew to be a 
hand, but it did not feel like any hand I had ever seen. 

“I’m glad to meet you,” I said. 

With some jest about people not usually being glad 
to meet nurses, she led me off to the elevator and my 
room. 

“You’ve quite a job before you — exploring this 
place,” she said with real cheer in her voice. “There are 
all sorts of adventures in this t&rra incognita. Every- 
thing is cushioned so you can’t bang your shins, but 
watch out for your toes. At first you’d better stay in 
bed for a few days and rest. Have you all you need in 
your valise? ” 

“I don’t know. A servant packed it.” 

“Well then. That’s the first bit of exploring to do. 
I’ll help you.” 

Her voice also jumped about surprisingly. There 
was something weird in being in a room with an utter 
stranger whose existence was only manifested by this 
apparently erratic voice and by hands which unsnarled 


A MAN’S WORLD 


73 


my shoe laces, handed me my pajamas, and put me to 
bed. 

“I must run off now and attend to Mrs. Stickney, 
next door — she is very fussy. The night niu'se. Miss 
Wright, comes on pretty soon, at six. She’ll bring you 
your supper. When you wake up in the morning, ring 
the bell, here over your head, and I’ll bring you break- 
fast. Good night.” 

It was when she had gone and I alone there in 
the strange bed, that I first felt the awful void of the 
darkness. I do not like to think of it now. 

It was probably not many minutes, but it seemed 
horn's on end, before Miss Wright brought me my sup- 
per. She sat on the edge of my bed and helped me find 
the way to my mouth. She was considerate, and tried 
to be cheering. But I did not like her. Always her 
very efficiency reminded me of my helplessness. And 
her voice seemed too large for a woman. It gave me the 
impression that she was talking to someone several 
feet behind me. 

They had, I think, mercifully drugged my food, for 
I fell asleep at once. When I woke I had no idea of the 
hour. For some time I lay there in the darkness won- 
dering about it. I did not want to wake anybody up. 
But at last I decided that I would not be so hungry 
before breakfast time. After much futile fumbling I 
found the bell above my bed. In a few minutes Miss 
Barton’s voice — even after all these years, I think of it 
as the type of sunny cheerfulness — announced that it 
was near eleven. When the breakfast was finished, 
with joking cautions against setting the bed on fire, 
she filled my pipe and taught my hands the way to the 
naatch box. 


74 


A MAN’S WORLD 


In the weeks which followed, I lost all track of the 
sun’s time. I came to figure my days in relation to her. 
During the “nights,” when she was off duty, the dark- 
ness was very black. 

It would be impossible for me to give in detail the 
evolution by which Miss Barton, my nurse, changed 
into my friend, Ann. It began I think when she dis- 
covered how utterly alone I was. The second day in 
the hospital I was given permission to have visitors, 
and I sent for my employer’s man of law. 

“Whom do you want to have come to see you to- 
morrow?” Miss Barton asked when he had gone. 

I could think of no one. 

“Do you want me to write some letters to your 
relatives? ” 

“No. I haven’t any near kin.” 

“Well. Haven’t you some friends to write to?” 

In the three years I had lived at Mr. Perry’s I had 
severed all social connections. I had not kept up my 
college friendships. Benson had been so opposed to my 
leaving what he called active life that I had lost all 
touch with him. My only relations with people had 
been technical, by correspondence. I did not want to 
trouble even Prof. Meer with my purely personal mis- 
fortunes. This seemed utterly impious to Miss Barton. 
What? I had lived several years in the city and had 
no friends? It was unbelievable! Unfortunately it 
was true. I could think of no one to ask in to relieve 
my loneliness. And there is no loneliness like the dark- 
ness. 

The next week was the worst, for the nurses changed 
and Miss Wright, who was on day duty, was not com- 
panionable. However, Miss Barton, taking compassion 


A MAN’S WORLD 


75 


on me, used often to sit with me by the hour at night. 
How fragmentary was my contact with her! No one 
who has not been deprived of sight can realize how large 
a part it plays in the relationships of life. I could only 
hear. There was always the creak of the rocking chair 
beside my bed and her voice, sometimes placid, some- 
times tense, swinging back and forth in the darkness. 
It did not seem to have any body to it. Whenever 
her hands touched me, it startled me. 

But from her talk I learned something of the person 
who owned the voice. She had been born in a Vermont 
village, where no one had ever heard of a professional 
woman, but as far back as she could remember, she 
had set her heart on medicine. Her father she had 
never known. Her mother, a fine needlewoman and 
embroidery designer had brought up the children. A 
brother was an engineer and the older sister a school 
teacher. But there had not been enough money to 
send Ann to medical college. Nursing was as near as 
she had been able to get towards her ambition. But 
what could not be given her she intended to win for 
herself. She had taken this position because the night 
duty was very light and every other week she could give 
almost the entire day to study. Her interest had turned 
to the new science of bacteriology. Her vague ambition 
to be a doctor had changed to the definite ideal of re- 
search work. 

Somehow the voice, so calmly certain when it dealt 
of this, gave me an impression of integrity of purpose, 
of invincible determination, such as sight has never 
given me of anyone. I did not, any more than she, 
know how she was to get her research laboratory. But 
I could not doubt that she would- She had unquestion- 


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A MAN’S WORLD 


ing faith in her destiny. I find myself emphasizing this 
phase of her. It impressed me most at the time. 

But her conversation was by no means limited to her 
ambition. She had read a thousand things besides her 
medicine, and spoke of them more frequently. She was 
constantly referring to books, to facts of history and 
science, of which I was ignorant. She talked seriously 
of ethics and the deeper things of life. It woke again 
in me all the old questionings and aspirations of prep, 
school days — the things I had hidden away from in my 
book-filled library. She was the first person I had met 
since the doctor at school who showed me what she 
thought of these things. Benson had talked copiously 
about the objective side of fife, but he had never re- 
ferred to his inner life. The people I had known wanted 
to make this world a prayer meeting, a counting house 
or a playground. Ann was no more interested in such 
ideals than I was. 

She used a phraseology which was new to me: “In- 
dividualism,” “self-expression,” “expansion of person- 
afity.” She spoke of life as a crusade against the 
tyrannies of prejudice and conventions. Her view- 
point was biologic. All evolutionary progress was based 
on variations from the type. Efforts to sustain or 
conserve the type she called “reactionary” and “in- 
vasive.” She insisted on the desirability of “absolute 
freedom to vary from the norm.” The authority she 
quoted with greatest reverence was Spencer. This 
conversation, much of which I did not understand, 
showed me clearly one thing — a soul seeking passion- 
ately for truth. That she told me was her ideal as 
it had been the war-cry of Bakounine. “Je suis un 
chercheur passionn4 de la 


A MAN’S WORLD 


77 


When any reference was made to my manner of life, 
she flared up. It was — and this was her worst de- 
nunciation — unnatural. 

“I believe in individualism, egoism,” she said. “But^ 
not in isolation. Man is naturally as gregarious as the 
ant. An ant that lived alone would be a non-ant. 
You’ve been a non-man. It’s good your eyes went back 
on you — if it teaches you sense. Intercourse with one’s 
kind is a necessary food of human life.” 

And while it was a God-send for me to find someone 
to talk to, it must have been also a pleasure for her. The 
stories she told me about the other patients showed 
that their relations to nmses were barren enough — when 
not actually insulting. After hstening by the hour to 
Mrs. Stickney’s endless little troubles, it was a reUef 
for her, I think, to come to my room and talk of the 
things which interested her violently. She gave more 
and more time to me. During the third week, when she 
was again on day duty, she read me Lecky’s “History 
of European Morals.” 


Ill 

It is hard to write about the next week. I can no 
longer see it as it must have looked in those days. I 
cannot tell the “why” of it. It was. 

There was immense loneliness — and fear. The few 
hundred dollars I had saved for studying in Oxford 
would pay the doctor’s bill and keep me for some 
months. But what was there beyond, if my eyes did not 
come back? At best the chances were only even. In 
any case the one trade I knew was gone. A bookworm 


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A MAN’S WORLD 


with weak eyes is a sorry thing. Of course I might have 
gone home. But I have never had much respect for 
the Prodigal Son. He must have been a poor spirited 
chap. 

Well, in my utmost misery, Ann comforted me — as 
women have comforted men since the world began. 
In some inexplicable way, for some inexplicable causes, 
she loved me. 

I try to arrange my memories of those days in or- 
derly sequence. But it is all a blur. Day by day my 
need grew and day by day she met the need. The 
patients in that hospital did not require much attention, 
except in the day. Most of them slept well. They 
rarely rang for her after midnight. She gave me more 
and more of her time. 

The stress between us grew rapidly, but by gradual 
steps, almost imperceptibly. Her hand rested in mine a 
trifle longer. The hand clasp became a caress — ^then a 
kiss. The kiss lingered. . . . 

So the voice took on a body. Touch came to the aid 
of hearing as a means of contact with this dear person 
of the darkness. It is strange in what a fragmentary 
way she took shape in my consciousness as something 
more than a paid nurse, more close and intimate than 
any friend I had known in the light. 

In the darkness every other thing seemed strange. 
What I discovered by touch to be a table, did not fit 
into the old category of “tables.” Even the pipe which 
I had smoked since college seemed to have undergone 
some fundamental change in its nature, Ann was the 
only thing which seemed natural. I had had no in- 
timacy with woman of the light by which I could 
judge this experience. Coming to me as it did, it did not 


A MAN’S WORLD 


79 


seem strange — it made subsequent things seem strange. 
When at last my eyes were opened, I blushed before 
Ann as before a stranger. 

It all seemed so inevitable. 

“It’s late,” she said one night, “I must go. If you 
want me, ring.” 

“Of course I want you.” 

“But you ought to sleep. I mean, ring if anything 
happens.” 

“It don’t matter whether anything happens or not. 
I ” 

“Don’t ring unless you need me.” 

The door closed behind her. I lay there debating 
with myself whether or not I needed her. The bell was 
in reach of my hand. I got out of bed to be further 
from temptation. With awkward trembling hands, 
I filled and lit my pipe and sat down by the open win- 
dow. My head ached with loneliness and desolation. 
Off somewhere in the night a church bell struck two, 
some belated footsteps rang sharp and clear on the side- 
walk below me. I tried to interest myself in speculating 
whither or to whom the person was hurrying. But my 
thoughts swung back to my own loneliness. In all the 
world there was no one who knew of my blindness and 
cared except the tin-can merchant who was cmsing that 
he must have the trouble to find someone to finish my 
work. No. There was Ann. 

Quite suddenly a vision of my childhood came back 
to me, of the time I had been sick at Mary Dutton’s, 
when she had taken me into the warm comfort of her bed. 
The vision brought quick resolution. I rang the bell. 
I stood up against the wall and waited — breathless. 
The door opened and from the darkness came her voice. 


80 


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‘‘Do you really want me?” 

I do not think I spoke, but I remember reaching out 
my hands to her. My strained ears caught a faint 
rustle — then came touch — ^and my arms were about 
her. 

So I was comforted. 


IV 

For the night there was rich forgetfulness. But the 
new day called me back from the Elysian Fields to the 
cold reality of this ordinary world of ours. 

My famiharity with the frank openness of my good 
friend Chaucer and the early English writers had 
cleansed my mind of much nastiness. I never had any 
feeling of Biblical sin in regard to my sudden passion 
for Ann. It was too entirely sweet and natural to be 
anything so wrong. But conflicting with this early 
Renaissance attitude was a modern sense of personal 
responsibility. The implications of the thing troubled 
me desperately. 

As I sat there in the darkness, thinking it out — with 
now and then Miss Wright coming in on the routine 
business of the day — I realized for the first time 
the difference between love and passion. There was 
no doubt that Ann loved me. But I did not love 
her. 

She was as far removed from cheap sentimentahty as 
any woman I have known. She was strangely unro- 
mantic. There was an impressive definiteness about 
everything she did. I knew from the first that the love 
she gave me was for always. It was to be the big human 
factor of her life, but it was not to be mutual. In my 
misery I wanted her comfort, in my loneliness I had 


A MAN’S WORLD 


81 


need of her affection. I had grown greatly fond of 
her, dependent on her, but I knew from the first that 
she was not to be the center of my life. 

Nevertheless my course seemed very clear. “The 
Woman Who Did” had not been written in those days. 
The idea, now so commonly expressed in hterature, 
that sex life outside of marriage might be beautiful 
and dignified, was not familiar. Although I had no 
longing for a perpetual mating, no desire to marry her, 
my conscience told me very clearly that I ought to. 
I did not think that I could, with anything like de- 
cency, do less. 

Since Margot had receded, I had not been given to 
romantic dreams. I was not counting on the grand 
passion, as a necessary part of life, so there was no 
especial self-sacrifice in closing the door on that possi- 
bility by marrying a woman I did not wholly love. 
Yet, threatened with blindness without money or a 
trade, what had I to offer her? The more I thought of 
these things the more humble I became. However her 
“fair name” seemed more important to me than any 
of these considerations. It was regrettable that I could 
not assme her ease and comfort. It was regrettable 
that I could not give her the love which should be 
the kernel of marriage, but all this seemed no reason 
not to offer her the husk. 

When at last Ann came, she laughed at me. What? 
Get married? Nothing was further from her mind. 
She had her owm work mapped out for her. Set up a 
home? Why as soon as she had saved a hundred and 
fifty dollars more she was going to Paris to study with 
Pasteur. People might laugh at his germs and cultures 
and senoms. Let them laugh! The future was to 


82 


A MAN’S WORLD 


bacteriology. Marry? Of course she loved me, but 
where did I get those two ideas mixed up? 

She gave me a lecture on free love. It is hard to 
write about a theory to which I am so strongly opposed. 
Yet Ann’s attitude in this matter is an integral part 
of my story. 

The longer I live the more remarkable it seems to 
me, how limited is the field in which any of us does 
original thinking. One of my friends is an exceedingly 
able physician. Within his specialty he has been start- 
lingly radical. His cures, however, are so amazing 
that his colleagues are accepting his methods. But 
in all other departments of thought he is hopelessly 
conservative. Another acquaintance, a painter, is a 
daring innovator in his use of colors, but has unquestion- 
ingly accepted all those beliefs which Max Nordau has 
called "The Conventional Lies of our Civilization.” 
To one subject we seem to give all our mental energy, 
all our powers of original thinking, in other matters 
we believe what we are taught. It was so with Ann. 
Her specialty was bacteriology, her ideas on marriage 
she had inherited. 

Her mother, whom I afterwards came to know and re- 
spect, was a remarkable woman. Mr. Barton, after a 
fairly upright younger life, had deserted her at thirty- 
five. Although neither Ann nor Mrs. Barton, ever 
spoke much of him, I learned that he had died, a hope- 
less drunkard. At first the mother had supported the 
children by nursing and sewing among the famihes 
of her Vermont neighbors. And everywhere, once she 
had entered the privacy of a household, she found the 
same repellent pretense, a carefully preserved outward 
show of harmony and affection, an inside reality of 


A MAN’S WORLD 


83 


petty quarrels and discord. Often she found situations 
of more abhorrent tragedy, jealousy, hatred and strange 
passions, women heartbroken for lack of love, bodily 
broken from an excess of child-bearing. From con- 
sidering her own misfortunes a horrible exception, she 
came to believe such sorrows were pitifully common. 
And everywhere women seemed to be the victims. 
However unhappy a man’s married life might be, he 
found release in his work. To the woman, home was 
everything, if it went wrong, all life was awry. 

By chance apparently, but I suppose inevitably, she 
had come in contact with some of the leaders of the 
early ‘ ‘ Woman’s Rights Movement. ’ ’ She corresponded 
with them ardently and at length came west to Cin- 
cinnati, having decided that she needed education. 
She supported herself and her children by needle-work 
and spent half the nights, after they were abed, over 
schoolbooks. She had to begin at the beginning. By 
herself, in her garret, she followed the grammar school 
course, crowding the work which takes a child two or 
three years, into the half nights of one. Gradually 
she worked her way up to the position of forewoman 
in a large embroidery establishment and so was able 
to send her children through high school, the older 
ones to college. But her health had given out before 
Ann’s turn came. 

Her interest in the Woman’s Movement had brought 
her into touch with all sorts of radicals and shortly 
after her arrival in Cincinnati she had met Herr Grun, 
a German Anarchist refugee. The friendship had 
grown into a beautiful love relationship which had 
lasted until his death. 

Ann had accepted all the libertarian dogmas of her 


84 


A MAN’S WORLD 


foster father. It seemed very wonderful to me to hear 
her speak about her “home.” It was a barren enough 
word to me. But to her it meant a wealth of affection, 
a place of sure sympathy. I listened with sad and 
bitter envy to her stories of childhood. The loving 
kindness, the happy harmony which she had known 
at home, she had been taught to believe resulted from 
the free relationship between her mother and her lover. 
Ann had grown up in an atmosphere where free love 
was the conventional thing. 

Persecution is the surest way of convincing a heretic 
that he is right. I have known a good many Anarchists 
and the most striking thing about them is their com- 
munity interest. Whether or not they are seriously 
offensive towards society, they are all in a close de- 
fensive alliance against it. The hostility they meet on 
every hand forces them to associate with their own 
kind. Ann had grown up among the children of com- 
rades. 

To them love is an entirely personal, individual 
matter. The interference of the Church or State they 
regard as impertinent and indecent. They take this 
whole business of sex more seriously, and in some re- 
spects more sanely, than most of us. Their households, 
as far as I have seen them, are very little different, no 
better nor worse than the average home. Their ad- 
vantage lies in the fact that most Anarchists are of 
kindly nature and that they are seldom cursed with 
money grubbing materialism. But this is a difference 
in the people, not in their institutions. 

Marriage, for Ann, would have been a repudiation 
of her up-bringing and the people she loved, comparable 
to that of a daughter of a Baptist minister who became 


A MAN’S WORLD 


85 


a Catholic nun or the third wife of a Mormon Elder. 
But Protestant women sometimes do marry Mormons 
or take the veil. And Anarchists are no wiser in bend- 
ing the twig so it will stay bent than Baptists. If Ann 
had been this type of a woman, she might have kicked 
over the traces, and have left her people to marry me, 
as carefully reared daughters have done in similar 
crises since the world was young. 

But she had a very definite theory that love should 
not be allowed to interfere with life. Each of us, she 
held, has been given a distinct personality, a special 
job to do in the world, and the development of this 
personality, the performance of this individual task, 
is the great aim of life. Love should not distract one 
from the race to the appointed goal. Love is an adorn- 
ment of life. She spoke with biting scorn of a man she 
knew who “wore too many rings on his fingers.” His 
taste was bad, he tried to over-decorate his life and 
so missed the reality of life. The goal she had set 
before her was bacteriology and she had not the faintest 
doubt that she had chosen it rightly. This was to be 
her life. If the fates granted her such joys as she 
called her love for me, it was something to be thankful 
for. But it must be subservient to — never allowed to 
interfere with — her career. 

Certainly this is not the ordinary attitude of women 
towards love. But Ann was an exceptional woman, 
one of those unaccountable exceptions, which we label 
with the vague word “Genius.” 

A few months ago I picked up an illustrated French 
paper and opening it at random came upon a page 
containing photographs of half a dozen celebrated 
women. Ann’s face was among them. There was an 


86 


A MAN’S WORLD 


article by an eminent psychologist on “Women of 
Genius.” His conclusions did not especially interest 
me, but I had never before seen so concise a statement 
of Ann’s accomplishments, the learned societies to 
which she belongs, the scientific reviews she helps to 
edit, the brochures she has written, the noted discoveries 
she had made. It startled me to see on half a page so 
impressive a record of achievement. 

It helps me now to a better understanding of the 
young woman, who puzzled me sorely twenty odd years 
ago. In those days I saw no special promise of distinc- 
tion. I smile with a wry twist to my mouth when I 
recall my presumption in thinking that it was necessary 
for her to hide herself under the shadow of my name. 
I suppose that if she had consented to marry me, we 
would have somehow found a way to gain a livelihood. 
In my crippled condition I could not have done much — 
I have no knack for money making. The burden of 
supporting the home would have fallen considerably 
on her. Perhaps it would have been “better” for both 
of us, if her strange upbringing had not made marriage 
distasteful to her. She and I might possibly have 
been “happier” if she had not been filled by the con- 
suming ambition which drove her to put love in a 
lesser place. Perhaps. But the race would have been 
poorer, would have lost her very real contributions 
to the elimination of disease. 

I could not argue with her then about these things. 
My knowledge was so much less than hers. But al- 
though it was a relief to find that she would not marry 
me, there was still a feeling of deep injustice. There 
seemed a despicable cheat in taking from her so much 
more than I could give. It seemed ultimately unfair 


A MAN’S WORLD 


87 


to accept a love I could not wholly return. But she 
brushed aside any efforts to explain. She ran to her 
room, and bringing a copy of the Rubaiyat, preached 
me quite a sermon on the quatrain about Omar’s as- 
tronomy, how he had revised the calendar, struck off 
dead yesterday and the unborn tomorrow. Love, she 
said, was subjective, its joy came from loving, rather 
than from being loved. Then suddenly she became 
timorous. Perhaps she was being “invasive,” perhaps 
I did not want her to love me. . . . 

My scruples went by the board with a rush. I surely 
did want her. And I was able to convince her of it. 

V 

Our relations having been for the time determined, 
Ann set about to reform me. She was really horrified 
at the isolated life I had been leading. That I took 
little interest in humanity, none at all in public life 
and only by chance knew who was mayor of the city, 
shocked her. Every evening, after her other patients 
had been settled for the night, she brought me the pa- 
pers. There was no love-making — only one kiss — 
until she had read to me for half an hour. It bored 
me to extinction, but she insisted that it was good for 
me. I had to listen, because each evening she examined 
me on what she had read the night before. So I ac- 
quired a certain amount of unrelated information about 
millionaire divorces, murders and municipal politics. 

Her next step was to make me associate with the 
other patients. 

“Bored?” she scolded. “It’s a sin to be bored. 
They’re people — human beings — just as good as you 
axe. You’re not interested in Mrs. Stickney’s husband? 


88 


A MAN’S WORLD 


You’re not interested in Mr. Blake’s business worries? 
Those are the two great facts of life. The woman half 
of the world is thinking about men. The man half is 
thinking about business. They are the two things 
which are really most interesting.” 

She took my reformation so much to heart that I 
began to be interested in it myself. I famiUarized 
myself with all the symptoms of a husband’s dyspepsia. 
Mrs. Stickney’s eye trouble seemed to have been caused 
by a too close application to cook books — in search 
for a dish her husband could digest. From Mr. Blake’s 
peevish discourse I got a new insight into business and 
the big and little dishonesties which go to make it up. 
I sometimes wonder if he really was robbed during his 
illness as much as he expected to be. He was con- 
vinced that his chief competitor would buy his trade 
secrets from his head book-keeper. He did not seem 
angry at his rival nor at his employee for seizing this 
opportunity to cheat him, but at the fates which, by 
his sickness, offered them so great a temptation. He 
complained bitterly because no such lucky chances 
had ever come to him. 

But it was through the newspapers that I gained 
most. 

“Want to hear about a millionaire socialist, who says 
that all judges and policemen ought to serve a year in 
jail before being eligible for office?” 

“It sounds more hopeful than campaign speeches,” 
I said submissively. 

It was Norman Benson. I recognized his quaint 
way of expressing things, before she came to his name. 

“I know him,” I laughed. 

I had to tell her all about our short acquaintance.. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


89 


“Why don’t you ask him to come up and see you?” 

I did not feel that I knew him well enough to bother 
him. I had not seen him nor heard from him for three 
years. 

The first thing in the morning, without letting me 
know, she telephoned him of my plight. About eleven 
o’clock, to my immense surprise. Miss Wright brought 
him to my room. 

Benson was the busiest man I have ever known. In 
later years when I roomed with him and was his most 
intimate friend, I could never keep track of half his 
activities. He was a sort of “consulting engineer” 
in advertising. Big concerns all over the country would 
send for him and pay well to have him attract the 
attention of the public to some new product. He could 
write the Spotless Town kind of verses while eating 
breakfast, and although he did not take art seriously, 
he drew some of the most successful advertisements 
of his time. One year he earned about thirty thousand 
dollars, above his inherited income of ten thousand. 
He did not spend more than five thousand a year on 
himself, but he was always hard up. 

He was director of half a hundred philanthropies — 
settlements, day-nurseries, immigrant homes, chil- 
dren’s societies, and so forth. His pet hobby was the 
“Arbeiter Studenten Verein.” When he did not en- 
tirely support these enterprises, he paid the yearly def- 
icit. It was such expenses which pushed him into the 
advertising work he detested. 

It was a wonder to me how, in spite of these manifold 
activities, he found time for the thousand and one 
little kindnesses, the varied personal relations he main- 
tained with all sorts and conditions of men. Once a 


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week or so he dined at the University Club, more often 
at the settlement, and the other nights he took pot-luck 
on the top floor of some tenement with one of his Ar- 
beiter Studenten. In the same way he found time to 
remember me and bring cheer into the hospital. 

That first morning, in speaking of the newspaper 
story, I asked him if he was a socialist. 

"Hanged if I know,” he said. "I never joined any 
socialist organization. I don’t care much for these 
soap-box people. They talk about reconstructing our 
industrial institutions, and most of them don’t know 
how to make change for a dollar. They talk about 
overthrowing Wall Street, and they don’t know rail- 
road-stock from live-stock. They don’t begin to realize 
what a big thing it is — nor how unjust and crazy and 
top-heavy. But sometimes I think I must be a socialist. 
I can’t open my mouth and say anything serious with- 
out everybody calling me a socialist. I don’t know.” 

The remaining weeks in the hospital gave me a great 
’und of things to ponder over. My mind works retro- 
spectively. I have always sympathized with the cud- 
chewing habit of the cow. The impressions of the 
hour are never clear-cut with me. For an experience 
to become real, I must mull over it a long time; gradu- 
ally it sinks into my consciousness and becomes a vital 
possession. 

Benson’s sort of kindness was absolutely new to me. 
No one had ever done things for me as he did. And as 
it surprised me to have him take the trouble to send 
me a can of my favorite tobacco, so the affection, the 
intimate revelations of love, which Ann gave me, was 
a thing undreamed of. "Come with me, up on to a 
high mountain, and I will show you all the wonder of 


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91 


the world” — such was Ann’s gift to me. Out of the 
horror of darkness, from the very bottom of the slough 
of despond, she led me up into the white light of the 
summit peaks of life. 

As I read back over these pages, I find that 1 have 
described Ann as a voice, as a person who thought and 
talked of serious things, who seemed principally ab- 
sorbed in an ambition, which up to that time had borne 
no fruit. I would like to picture the woman who came 
to me in the darkness with a wealth of cheer and tender- 
ness and love. 

Some day I hope our literature and our minds will 
be purified so that such things can be dealt with sanely 
and sweetly. But that time has not yet come and I 
must be content with the tools at hand. Ann brought 
to me in those desolate days all the wondrous womanly 
things — the quaint and gentle jests of love, the sense- 
less sweet words and names which are caresses, the sud- 
den gusts of self revelation, the strange and unexpected 
restraints — of which I may not write. 

I was not lonely any more — not even when Miss 
Wright was on duty — there was so much to ponder 
over. 

VI 

At last the bandages were taken off. I recall the 
sudden painful glare of the darkened room, the three 
doctors in hospital costumes, who were consulting on 
different forms of torture. Especially I remember the 
mole on the forehead of the chief, a gray haired, spec- 
tacled man. It was the first things my eyes, startled 
out of their long sleep, fixed upon. The ordeal dragged 
along tragically. It seemed that they were intentionally 


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slow. But the verdict when it came was acquittal. I 
was lucky. With care I might regain almost normal 
vision. But for months I must not try to read. Al- 
ways, all my life, I must stop at the first hint of fatigue. 

So, having adjusted some smoked glasses, they sent 
me back to my room, to pack and go out into a new 
life. As I entered the corridor, I saw two nurses at the 
other end. My heart stopped with a jump and I was 
suddenly dizzy. Somehow I had not thought of Ann 
in terms of sight. She had come to me out of the dark- 
ness, revealed herself as a sound and a touch. I had 
no idea how she would look. They both came towards 
me. I could see very little through my dark glasses. 
I could not guess which was which. 

“So. They’ve taken off the bandages? I’m very 
glad.” It was Miss Wright’s strenuous voice. 

“I’m glad, too,” Ann said. 

I tried to see her, but my eyes were full of tears. 

“I’ll show him his room,” Ann said. 

When the door was closed on us, she threw her arms 
about my neck and cried as I had never seen a woman 
cry. 

“Oh! beloved,” she sobbed. “I’m so glad. I was 
afraid — afraid you were going to be blind.” 

She had always been so cheerful, so professional, 
about my case — of course it would turn out all right — 
that I had not seen it from her point of view. It was a 
revelation to me that her bravery had been a sham. 

“Oh. I was afraid — afraid!” 

I tried to comfort her but all the pent-up worry and 
fear of weeks had broken out. And I had not realized 
that her love had made my risk a personal tragedy 
for her. 


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93 


When she had quieted a little, I wanted her to stand 
away so that I might look at her. But no — ^she said — 
she did not want me to see her first when her eyes were 
swollen with tears. She clung to me tightly and would 
not show me her face. 

There was a knock at the door. I had not lived 
long enough to realize the seriousness of a woman’s 
wet eyes, and, without thought of this, I said, “Come 
in.” It was Benson. 

“Miss Wright tells me — ” 

He hesitated. He was looking at Ann. I turned too. 
She was making a brave effort to appear unconcerned, 
but her eyes were red past all hiding. 

“Yes,” she said, in her professional tone. “The 
news is very good. Better than we hoped.” 

“Fine. I dropped in,” Benson said, as though there 
was nothing to be embarrassed about, “to see how you 
came out and get you to spend the week-end with me 
if they let you go. I’ve got to visit my uncle and aunt — 
stupid old people — ^hypochondriacs. But they are 
going to Europe next week and I really must see them. 
I’ll die of boredom if there isn’t someone to talk to. 
Better come along — the sailing’s good. I’ve got to run 
over to the club for a few minutes. Can you get your 
grip packed in half an hour? All right. So long.” 

Ann was as nearly angry as I have ever seen her. 

“At least you might have given me time to dry my 
eyes.” 

“I don’t believe he noticed anything. Men never 
see things like that,” I said. 

But Ann laughed at this and so her good temper was 
restored. 

Her face, now that I saw it. was not at all what I 


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had expected. It was serious, meagre, a bit severe. 
I had thought of her as blonde, but her hair was a rich, 
deep brown. Of course I am no judge of her looks. 
She had brought joy into my darkness. She could not 
but be beautiful for me. 

The expression is what counts most. About her 
face, emphasized by her nurse’s uniform, was a def- 
inite air of sensibleness, of New England reliability. 
Perhaps under other circumstances she would not have 
attracted me. Her face in repose might not have in- 
spired more than confidence. But when she put her 
hands on my shoulders and looked up into my face, 
with the light of love in her eyes, it seemed to me that 
a mystic halo of beauty shone about her. No other 
woman has ever looked to me as Ann did. And yet I 
know that most people would call her “plain.” 

The hardest thing for me to accept about her was 
her height. I had thought her considerably shorter 
than Miss Wright. I had been misled of course by the 
relative size of their voices. Ann was above average 
height and Miss Wright hardly five feet. 

In the half hour before Benson returned, we had not 
discussed anything more concrete than opportunities 
to meet outside the hospital. She was free on alternate 
Saturdays from supper time till midnight. I was rather 
afraid that Benson, when we were alone, might ask some 
questions or make some joke about her, but he talked 
busily of other things. 

His uncle and aunt were a lonely old couple. Their 
children were established and they had little left to 
interest them except their illnesses, some of which, 
Benson said, were real. It was a beautiful house just 
out of Stamford on the Sound — rather dolefully empty 


A MAN’S WORLD 


95 


now that the children had gone. I had never seen such 
luxury, such heavy silver, such ubiquitous servants. 

They were planning to live in Paris, near a daughter 
who had married a Frenchman. Their arrangements 
had been all made. But at the last moment their 
trained nurse had thrown them into confusion by de- 
ciding suddenly that she did not want to leave America. 
The aunt told us about it, querulously, at dinner. 
Ann’s desire came to mind. 

“How much free time would the nurse have?” I 
asked. “ I know one who is anxious to live in Paris and 
study with Pasteur. She is very capable. Your nephew 
has seen her — Miss Barton — she was at the hospital. 
I liked her immensely.” 

Benson shot a quick glance at me. It was the only 
sign he ever gave of having noticed any intimacy be- 
tween us. 

“My aunt expects to live permanently in Paris,” 
he said. “ She would not want to take any one who was 
not willing to stay indefinitely.” 

“That, I think, would suit Miss Barton exactly.” 

Benson immediately fell in with my suggestion and 
recommended Ann enthusiastically. I had to answer 
a string of questions. The aunt was one of those unde- 
cided persons who hate to make up their mind, but the 
uncle wanted to get started. We talked about it con- 
tinually during the three Sunday meals, and on Mon- 
day rpoming they went in to see her, with a note of 
introduction from me. 

Ann, as I had foreseen, was delighted with the oppor- 
tunity. She pleased them, and as soon as she could 
find a substitute, an easy matter, as her position was 
desirable, the arrangements were made. 


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VII 

Ann and I spent together the day before they sailed. 
We had planned an excursion to the sea-side, but it 
rained desperately and we found refuge in an hotel. 
We were too much interested in each other to care much 
about the weather or our siirroundings. Any beauties 
of nature which might have distracted our attention 
would have seemed an impertinence. 

It was a day of never-to-be-forgotten delight. And 
yet it was not without a subtle alloy. By an unex- 
pressed agreement, we lived up to Omar’s philos- 
ophy, we discussed neither the past nor the future. I 
was afraid to stop and think, for fear it might seem 
wrong. . . . 

Once she brought a cloud by some expressions of 
gratitude for my having, as she put it, given her this 
great opportunity to realize her dream of studying with 
Pastem. And all the while, I knew it was not solely 
for her sake that I had picked up this chance, which 
the fates had thrown me. Despite the joy of her love 
there was this under-current of incertitude. I wanted 
to get far enough away from it, to judge it. It is hard 
to express what I mean, but I was happier, more light- 
hearted, that day, because I knew she was leaving the 
next. 

But these blurred moments were — only moments. 
We were young. It was the spring of life as it was of 
the year. The spirit of poesy, of the great Lyrics, 
was there in that tawdry hotel room. . . . 

In the early morning, through the wet glistening 
streets we made our way across town towards the 
river. Of course I knew just where we were going, 


A MAN’S WORLD 


97 


but somehow the entrance to the dock found me sur- 
prised and unprepared. For a moment we stood there, 
shaking hands as formally as might be. Suddenly 
tears sparkled in her eyes, she reached up and kissed 
me. Then she turned abruptly and walked into the 
bare, shadowy building. She had a firm step, she was 
sallying out to meet her destiny. 

I watched until she was out of sight. And then I 
surprised myself by a sigh of strange relief. 

VIII 

Later in the day I lunched with Benson at the Uni- 
versity Club. 

“What are your plans now?” he asked as we settled 
down to coffee and cigarettes. 

“Find a job, I suppose.” 

“You’re in no condition to work nor to look for 
work — ^just out of the hospital.” 

“But I’ve got to eat.” 

“That’s a fool superstition!” he exploded. “You 
don’t have to work in order to eat. None of ‘the best 
people’ do. Half the trouble with the world is that so 
many idiots will sweat — just to eat. If they’d refuse 
to work for tripe-stews and demand box seats at the 
opera, it would do wonders. Why people will slave all 
their lives long for a chance to die in a tenement is be- 
yond me. What kind of work do you want?” 

My ideas on that point were vague. 

“ How much money have you? ” 

That I had figured out. 

“One hundred and eighty-five dollars and ninety- 
three cents. And then my books — ^perhaps I could 
get a hundred more for them.” 


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“Of course if you are suflBciently unscrupulous that’s 
a good start for a fortune. Lots of men have done it 
on less. But it’s a bore to sit back and watch money 
grow. Did you ever see a hunk of shad-roe — all eggs? 
Money’s a darn sight more prolific than fish. Impreg- 
nate a silver dollar with enough cynicism and you 
can’t keep your expenses up with your income. Look 
how wealth has grown in this country in spite of all 
our thievery and waste! In the Civil War we burned 
money — threw millions after millions into the flames — 
we never noticed it. The nation was richer in ’65 than 
in ’60. 

“But making money is a fool’s ambition. Just think 
how many dubs succeed in earning a living. Anybody 
can do that. It isn’t original. Look round for interest- 
ing work. Something that’s worth doing aside from 
the wages. Take things easy. If you begin worrying, 
you’ll grab the first job that offers and think you’re 
lucky. Come down to the settlement — the board’s 
seven a week. You can live three months on half 
your money. In that time you’ll see a dozen openings. 
You’ll be able to take your choice instead of snatching 
the first job you see.” 

This conversation was typical of Benson. He nearly 
always started off with some generalized talk, but just 
when you began to think he had forgotten you and the 
issue, he would end up sharp, with a definite proposi- 
tion. I accepted his advice and moved to the “Chil- 
dren’s House.” 

So my temporary blindness brought me into contact 
with two great facts of life I had hitherto ignored, 
women and want — the beauty of sex and the horror of 
misery. And these two things occupied my whole mind. 


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99 


One by one I picked out my memories of Ann and 
pondered them in all their implications. I tried to 
arrange them like beads on a thread, in some ordered 
unified design. Day by day she became a more real 
and concise personality. 

The effect of my encounter with Ann, I could then 
have found no word to describe. But a very modem 
term would explain my meaning to some. She opened 
my spirit to the “ over-tones ” of life. Last year I 
heard '‘Pelleas and Melisande.” I sat through the 
first half hour unstirred. There was much sensuous 
appeal to the eyes, but the music seemed unsatisfac- 
tory. Suddenly appreciation came. Suddenly I under- 
stood with a rush what he was meaning to say. All 
the mystic harmony, the unwritten, unwritable wonder 
of it swept over me. And now Debussy seems to me 
the greatest of them all. “The Afternoon of the Faun ” 
moves me more deeply than any other music. In fact, 
I think, we must invent some newer name than “mu- 
sic,” for this more subtle perfume of sound. 

In a similar way Ann showed me the “over-tones” 
of life. Deeper significance, mystic meanings, I found 
in many things I had hardly noticed before. The sun- 
sets held a richer wealth of colors. I had known Chaucer 
and his predecessors intimately, somewhat less thor- 
oughly all the world’s great poetry. It had interested 
me not only as a study of comparative philology, not 
only as a delicate game of prosody — of rhythm and 
rhyme and refrain. It had held for me a deeper charm 
than these mechanical elements — fascinating as they 
are. But somehow it all became new to me. I dis- 
covered in the old familiar lines things, which, alone in 
my study, I had never dreamed of. I began to see in 


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all poetry — in all art — an effort to express these “over- 
tones.” 

On the other hand, my active life was spent in the 
appalling misery of the slums — a thing equally new to 
me. In those days the majority of our neighbors were 
Irish and German. Decade after decade the nationality 
of Stanton Street has changed. First the Germans 
disappeared, then the Russian and Hungarian Jews 
pushed out the Irish, now one hears as much Italian 
as Yiddish. The heart-rending poverty, the degrada- 
tion of filth and drunkenness is not a matter of race. 
Wave after wave of immigration finds its native cus- 
toms and morality insufficient to protect it from the 
contagion of the slum. And so it will be until we have 
the wisdom to blot out the crime of congestion and 
give our newcomers a decent chance. 

I try to force my mind back to its attitude in those 
first weeks in the “Children’s House” and try to ex- 
plain to myself how I became part of “The Settlement 
Movement.” I fail. I think very few of the really im- 
portant things in life are susceptible to a logical ex- 
planation. 

I have met some people, who from books alone have 
been impressed with the injustices of our social organi- 
zation, and have left the seclusion of their studies to 
throw their lives into the active campaign for justice. 
Such mental processes are, I think, rare. Certainly 
it came about differently in my case. 

When Benson proposed that I should come to live 
in the settlement, I felt no “call” to social service. 
I was lonely, out of work, utterly adrift. The memory 
of the evening I had spent with him in the Children’s 
House and the interesting people I had met was very 


A MAN’S WORLD 


101 


pleasant. I had no suspicions that I was going there 
to stay. It appealed to me as sort of convalescent home, 
where I could rest up until I was able to go out and 
cope with the ordinary life of the world. 

At first the little circle of workers seemed incoherent. 
Here were half a dozen highly educated men and women, 
most of whom had left pleasant homes, living in the 
most abject neighborhood of the city. Why? W^hat 
good were they doing? Around us roared the great 
fire of poverty. Here and there they were plucking 
out a brand, to be sure. But the fire was beyond their 
control. They did not even think they could stop it. 

I remember one night at dinner we had for guest, a 
professor of economics from one of the big universities. 
He prided himself on his cold scientific view-point, he 
regarded the settlement movement as sentimental, 
almost hysterical, and he had the ill-breeding to forget 
that what he scoffed at was a desperately serious thing 
to his hosts. 

“This settlement movement reminds me of a story,” 
he said. “Once upon a time a kind hearted old gentle- 
man was walking down the street and found a man — 
drunk — in the gutter. He tried vainly to pull the un- 
fortunate one up on the sidewalk and then losing cour- 
age, he said, ‘My poor man, I can’t help you, but I’ll 
get down in the gutter beside you.’ ” 

He laughed heartily, but no one else did. The story 
fell decidedly flat. It was several minutes before any- 
one took up the challenge. At last. Rev. Mr. Dawn, 
the head worker, coughed slightly and replied. He 
had turned quite red and I saw that the joke had stung 
him. 

“That is a very old story,” he said, “it was current 


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in Jerusalem a good many centuries ago. It was told 
with great eclat by a scribe and a pharisee who ‘passed 
by on the other side.’ ” 

“Oh, come, now!” our guest protested. “That’s 
hardly a fair comparison. The Samaritan we are told 
really did some good to the poor devil. And besides 
the victim in that case was not a drunkard, but a person 
who had ‘fallen among thieves.’ ” 

“Thieves?” Benson asked, with a ring of anger in 
his voice. “Do you think there are no thieves but 
highway robbers? ” — and then apparently realizing the 
uselessness of arguing with such a man, he smiled 
blandly and in a softer tone went on. “Besides some 
of us are foolish enough to imagine that we also can 
do some good. Let’s not discuss that, we’d rather keep 
our illusions. Won’t you tell us what you are teaching 
your classes about Marx’s theory of surplus value? Of 
course I know that phrase is taboo. But what terms 
do you use to describe the proceeds of industrial rob- 
bery?” 

I could not make up my mind whether the professor 
realized that Benson was trying to insult him or whether 
he was afraid to tackle the question. At all events 
he turned to Mrs. Dawn and changed the conver- 
sation. 

This little tilt gave me a great deal to think of. I 
did not like the professor’s attitude towards life. But 
after all, what good were these settlement workers doing? 
Again and again this question demanded an answer. 
Sometimes I went out with Mr. Dawn to help in bury- 
ing the dead. I could see no adequate connection be- 
tween his kindly words to the bereaved and the hideous 
dragon of tuberculosis which stalked through the 


A MAN’S WORLD 


103 


crowded district. What good did Dawn’s ministrations 
do? Sometimes I went out with Miss Bronson, the 
kindergartner and listened to her talk to uncompre- 
hending mothers about their duties to their children. 
What could Miss Bronson accomplish by playing a 
few hours a day with the youngsters who had to go 
to filthy homes? They were given a wholesome lunch 
at the settlement. But the two other meals a day they 
must eat poorly cooked, adulterated food. Sometimes 
I went out with Miss Cole, the nurse, to visit her cases. 
It was hard for me to imagine anything more futile 
than her single-handed struggle against unsanitary 
tenements and unsanitary shops. 

I remember especially one visit I made with her. It 
was the crisis for me. The case was a child-birth. There 
were six other children, all in one unventilated room, 
its single window looked out on a dark, choked airshaft, 
and the father was a drunkard. I remember sitting 
there, after the doctor had gone, holding the next 
youngest baby on my knee, while Miss Cole was bath- 
ing the puny newcomer. 

“Can’t you make him stop crying for a minute?” 
Miss Cole asked nervously. 

“No,” I said with sudden rage. “I can’t. I wouldn’t 
if I could. Why shouldn’t he cry? Why don’t the other 
little fools cry! Do you want them to laugh?” 

She stopped working with the baby and offered me 
a flask of brandy from her bag. But brandy was not 
what I wanted. Of course I knew men sank to the very 
dregs. But I had never realized that some are born 
there. 

When she had done all she could for the mother and 
child. Miss Cole put her things back in the bag and we 


104 


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started home. It was long after midnight but the 
streets were still alive. 

“What good does it do?” I demanded vehemently. 
“Oh, I know — you and the doctor saved the mother’s 
life — brought a new one into the world and all that. 
But what good does it do? The child will die — it was 
a girl — let’s get down on our knees right here and pray 
the gods that it may die soon — not grow up to want 
and fear — and shame.” Then I laughed. “No, there’s 
no use praying. She’ll die all right! They’ll begin 
feeding her beer out of a can before she’s weaned. 
No. Not that. I don’t believe the mother will be able 
to nurse her. She’ll die of skimmed milk. And if that 
don’t do the trick there’s T. B. and several other things 
for her to catch. Oh, she’ll die all right. And next 
year there’ll be another. For God’s sake, what’s the 
use? "What good does it do?” Abruptly I began to 
swear. 

“You mustn’t talk like that,” Miss Cole said in a 
strained voice. 

“Why shouldn’t I curse?” I said fiercely, turning on 
her challengingly, trying to think of some greater blas- 
phemy to hurl at the muddle of life. But the sight of 
her face, livid with weariness, her lips twisting spas- 
modically from nervous exhaustion, showed me one 
reason not to. The realization that I had been so brutal 
to her shocked me horribly. 

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” I cried. 

She stumbled slightly. I thought she was going to 
faint and I put my arm about her to steady her. She 
was almost old enough to be my mother, but she put 
her head on my shoulder and cried like a little child. 
We stood there on the sidewalk — in the glare of a noisy, 


A MAN’S WORLD 


105 


loathsome saloon — like two frightened children. I 
don’t think either of us saw any reason to go anywhere. 
But we dried our eyes at last and from mere force of 
habit walked blindly back to the children’s house. On 
the steps she broke the long silence. 

“I know how you feel — everyone’s like that at first, 
but you’ll get used to it. I can’t tell ‘why.’ I can’t 
see that it does much good. But it’s got to be done. 
You mustn’t think about it. There are things to do, 
today, tomorrow, all the time. Things that rmist be 
done. That’s how we live. So many things to do, we 
can’t think. It would kill you if you had time to think. 
You’ve got to work — work. 

“You’ll stay too. I know. You won’t be able to 
go away. You’ve been here too long. You won’t 
ever know ‘ why.’ You’ll stop asking if it does any good. 
And I tell you if you stop to think about it, it will kill 
you. You must work.” 

She went to her room and I across the deserted court- 
yard and up to mine. But there was no sleep. It 
was that night that I first realized that I also must. 
I had seen so much I could never forget. It was some- 
thing from which there was no escape. No matter how 
glorious the open fields, there would always be the 
remembered stink of the tenements in my nostrils. 
The vision of a sunken cheeked, tuberculosis ridden 
pauper would always rise between me and the beauty 
of the sunset. A crowd of hurrying ghosts — the ghosts 
of the slaughtered babies — would follow me every- 
where, crying, “Coward,” if I ran away. The slums 
had taken me captive. 

As I sat there alone with my pipe, the groans of the 
district’s uneasy sleep in my ears, I realized more 


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A MAN’S WORLD 


strongly than I can write it now the appalhng unity of 
life. I sensed the myriad intricate filaments which bind 
us into an indivisible whole. I saw the bloody rack- 
rents of the tenements circulating through all business — 
tainting it — going even into the collection plates of 
our churches. I saw the pay drawn by the lyric poet, 
trailing back through the editorial bank account to 
the pockets of various subscribers who speculated in 
the necessities of life, who waxed fat off the hunger of 
the multitude. My own clothes were sweat-shop made. 

I could not put out the great fire of injustice. I 
could at least bind up the sores of some of my brothers 
who had fallen in — who were less lucky than I. My 
old prep, school ethics came back to me. “I want to 
live so that when I die, the greatest number of people 
will be glad I did live.” In a way it did not seem to 
matter so much whether I could accomplish any last- 
ing good. I must do what I could. Such effort seemed 
to me the only escape from the awful shame of com- 
plaisancy. 

Wandering in and out of the lives of the people of 
our neighborhood, I looked about for a field of activity. 
There were so many things to be done. I sought for 
the place where the need was greatest. It did not take 
me long to decide — a conclusion I have not changed- - 
that the worst evils of our civilization come to a head 
in “The Tombs.” 

The official name for that pile of stone and brick is 
“The Criminal Covuts Building.” But the people per- 
sist in calling it “The Tombs.” The prison dated from 
the middle of the century and a hodge-podge of official 
architecture had been added, decade by decade, as the 
political bosses needed money. It housed the district 


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107 


attorney’s oflSce, the “police court,” “special ses- 
sions” for misdemeanants, and “general sessions” for 
felons. One could study om whole penal practice in 
that building. 

I was first led into its grim shadow by a woman who 
came to the settlement. Her son, a boy of sixteen, had 
been arrested two months before and had been waiting 
trial in an unventilated cell, originally designed for a 
single occupant, with two others. His cell-mates had 
changed a dozen times. I recall that one had been an 
old forger, who was waiting an appeal, another was the 
keeper of a disorderly house and a third had been a 
high church curate, who had embezzled the foreign 
mission fund to buy flowers for a chorus girl. The 
lad was patently innocent. And this was the very rea- 
son he was held so long. The district attorney was 
anxious to make a high record of convictions. His 
term was just expiring and he was not calling to trial 
the men he thought innocent, these “technically” 
bad cases he was shoving over on his successor. At 
last, with the help of a charitable lawyer, named May- 
nard, of whom I will write more later, we forced the case 
on the calendar and the boy was promptly acquitted. 

In talking over this case with Benson, I found that he 
was already interested in the problems of Criminology. 
He was one of the trustees of “The Prisoner’s Aid 
Society.” The interview in the newspaper, which Ann 
had read to me at the hospital, had been an effort of 
his to draw attention to the subject and to infuse some 
life into the society. 

“They’re a bunch of fossils,” he said. “Think they’re 
a ‘sociite savante.’ They read books by foreign pe- 
nologists and couldn’t tell a crook from a carpet sweeper. 


108 


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We need somebody to study American crime. Not a 
dilettante — someone who will go into it solid.” 

I told him I had thought a good deal about it and 
was ready to tackle the job if the ways and means could 
be arranged. 

“ I imagine I could get the society to pay you a living 
salary. But they are dead ones. If you did anything 
that wasn’t in the books, it would scare them. I’ll 
think it over.” 

About a week later, I received a letter from the re- 
cently elected, not yet installed district attorney asking 
me to call on him. His name was Brace, his letter the 
result of Benson’s thinking. I found him a typical 
young reform politician. A man of good family, he 
was filled with enthusiasm, and confidently expected 
to set several rivers on fire. There was going to be 
absolute, abstract justice under his regime. Benson 
had told him how the actual district attorney was 
shoving off the "bad cases” on him and he was right- 
eously indignant. He wanted someone whose fidelity 
he could trust, who would keep an eye on the prison 
side of the Tombs. He was sure there were many abuses 
there to stop, and he was the man to do it. The only 
position he could offer me under the law was that of 
special county detective. The pay would be eighteen 
hundred a year. 

"It is not exactly a dignified position,” he said. 
"The county detectives are a low class, — but of course 
you won’t have to associate with them.” 

I was more than ready to take the place. With the 
rest of the new administration I was sworn in, and so 
entered on my life work. It was a far cry from my 
earlier ambition to be a Fellow at Oxford. 


BOOK IV 
I 

“Literary unity” can be secured in an autobiography 
only at the expense of all sense of reality. The simplest 
of us is a multiple personality, can be described only 
partially from any one point of view. The text book 
on physiology which I studied in school contained three 
illustrations. One of them pictured a human being 
as a structure of bones, a skeleton; another showed man 
as a system of veins and arteries; the third as a mass of 
interwoven muscles. None of them looked like any 
man I have ever seen. It is the same with most auto- 
biographies, the writers, in order to center attention 
on one phase of their activities, have cut away 
everything which would make their stories seem 
life-like. 

“The Memoirs” of Cassanova give us the picture 
of a lover. But he must have been something more 
than a rou6. “The Personal Recollections” of General 
Grant portray the career of a soldier. But after all 
he was a man first, it was more or less by chance that 
he became a victory-machine. How fragmentary 
is the picture of his life, which Benvenuto Cellini gives 
us! 

I might accept these classic models and tell directly 
the story of my work in the Tombs. I might limit my 
narrative to that part of myself which was involved 
109 


110 


A MAN’S WORLD 


in friendship with Norman Benson. Or again, I might 
strip off everything else, ignore the flesh and bones 
and blood vessels, and write of myself as an “emotional 
system.” In one of these ways I might more nearly 
approach a literary production. But certainly it would 
be at a sacrifice of verisimilitude. Perhaps some great 
writer will come who will unite the artistic form with 
an impression of actuality. But until genius has taught 
us the method we must choose between the two ideals. 
My choice is for reality rather than art. 

And life, as it has appeared to me, is episodal in 
form, unified only in the continual climaxes of the 
present moment. It is a string of incidents threaded 
on to the uninterrupted breathing of the same person. 
The facts of any life are related only de post facto, in 
that they influence the future course of the individual 
to whom they happen. The farther back we strive 
to trace these influences, which have formed us, the 
greater complexity we find. It is not only our bodies 
which have “family trees,” that show the number of 
our ancestors, generation by generation, increasing 
with dizzy rapidity. It is the same with our thoughts 
and tastes. From an immensely diffuse luminosity 
the lens of life has focused the concentrated rays of 
light which are you and I. 

So — in telling of my life, as I see it — my narrative 
must break up into fragments. Unartistic as such a 
form may be, it seems to me the only one possible for 
autobiography. Incidents must be given, which, 
however unrelated they appear, seem to me to have 
been caught by the great lens and to have formed an 
integral part of the focal point, which sits here — ^try- 
ing to describe itself. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


111 


II 

For some years I have been continually writing on 
the subject of criminology. I could not give, here in 
this narrative, a complete picture of the Tombs and its 
people, nor show in orderly sequence how one incident 
after another forced me into a definite attitude towards 
our penal system, without repeating what I have pub- 
lished elsewhere. But the atmosphere in which I have 
spent my working life has so definitely influenced me, 
has been so important a force in my experiment in 
ethics, that I must give it some space. I must try, at 
least, to give some illuminating examples of the sort 
of thing which did influence me and a brief statement 
of the attitude which has resulted from my work, for 
without this background the rest of my story would be 
meaningless. 

At flrst I found myself the object of universal hos- 
tility. The Tombs was a feudal domain of Tammany 
Hall. I was regarded as an enemy. 

The “spoils system” had given place to the evils of 
civil service. Municipal employees could not be dis- 
placed unless “charges” had been proven against them. 
The people of the Tombs did not worry much about 
the reform administration. They regarded it as an 
interruption in the even tenor of their ways, which 
happily would not last long. They were used to such 
moral spasms on the part of the electorate and knew how 
little they were worth. Some of the “Reform” officials 
tried earnestly to clean up their departments. Their 
efforts were defeated by unruly subordinates, men 
trained by and loyal to the machine. 

The way things went in the Tombs was typical. 


112 


A MAN’S WORLD 


Brace had a conference with the new commissioner 
of correction and as a result some “Instructions for 
the guidance of prison keepers” were pasted up on 
the walls. But district attorneys change with every 
election, while the warden — protected by civil serv- 
ice — goes on forever. The sale of “dope” to the 
prisoners, forbidden by the “instructions” in capital 
letters, was not interrupted for a day. Within a week 
the screws had forgotten to make jokes about it. 

Having been appointed by the reformer Brace, 
I was naturally supposed to be his personal spy. I 
was saved from falling into so fatal a mistake by a queer 
old prison missionary called “General Jerry.” He 
had lost an arm at Three Oaks, in the hospital at An- 
dersonville he had found “religion.” And as the Lord 
had visited him in prison, he had devoted what was 
left of his life to similar work. I think he had no in- 
come beyond his pension — he was always shabby. He 
had very little learning, but an immense amount of 
homely wisdom. If ever a man has won a right to a 
starry crown it was Jerry. He and the Father — each 
in his different way — were the most wholesouled Chris- 
tians I have ever encountered. Such a noble dignity 
shone from the eyes of this humble old man that I 
felt it ever a privilege to sit at his feet and learn of him. 

First of all, from watching him, I found that a man 
who was sincere and honest could win the respect of 
the Tombs, in spite of such handicaps. Before long 
we became friends, and he gave me much shrewd ad- 
vice. 

“I come here to save souls,” he said. “That’s all 
I come for. I don’t let nothin’ else interest me. I 
ain’t no district attorney. Sure, I see graft. Can't 


A MAN’S WORLD 


113 


help it. Every year — onct — I talk to each one of the 
screws about his soul. ‘Big Jim/ I says, ‘you ain’t 
right wid God. I ain’t the only one as seed you take 
money from the mother of that dago what was hanged. 
I ain’t the only one as heard you lie to that Jew woman, 
telling her how you’d help her husband out. I ain’t 
the only one as knows the hotel you took her to. God 
sees! God hears! He knows! You’d better square 
it wid Him!’ That’s all I says. They knows I don’t 
go round tollin’ it. And they helps me wid my work. 
Just yesterday Big Jim comes to me. ‘General,’ he 
says, ‘there’s a guy up in 431 what’s crying. I guess 
you’d better hand him a bit of Gospel.’ 

“What do you come down here to the Tombs for? 
To help out the poor guys what they’ve got wrong. 
Well. Don’t do nothin’ else. The screws all think 
you’re gum-shoein’ for Brace. ‘Jerry,’ they says to me, 
‘ who’s the new guy? What’s he nosin’ around here for? ’ 
‘Don’t know,’ I says. ‘Better keep your eye on him — 
same as I’m doin’,’ I says. ‘Alter a while we’ll know. ’ ” 

I felt their eyes on me all the time. A couple of 
months later I sat down beside Jerry in the courtyard; 
he had a Bible on his knees and a cheese sandwich in 
his hand. 

“I ain’t no good sayin’ Grace,” he explained, “so I 
always reads a Psalm when I eat,” .... “Say, 
young man,” he went on, “I got a word to say to you. 
The screws ain’t got you quite sized up yet — but most 
of ’em agrees you ain’t nobody’s damn fool. Now I 
just want to tell you something. You take this here 
Tombs all together — ^warden, screws, cops and law- 
yers, district attorneys and j edges — you can’t never be 
friends wid all of ’em. They’s too many what’s hatin’ 


114 


A MAN’S WORLD 


each other. So you got to pick. You say you’re going 
to stay by this job. Well, you just better figure out 
who’s goin’ to stick wid you. The jedges stay and the 
screws stay. But the district attorneys don’t never 
stay more’n two years. Figure it out. That’s what the 
good book means by 'Be ye wise as sarpents.’ ” 

Jerry’s advice was good. I had already “figured 
out” that the favor of the judges was more important 
for me than that of the district attorney. I had to 
choose whom I would serve, and it was very evident 
that it was expedient — if I wished to accomplish anj'- 
thing — to make friends with the mammon of political 
unrighteousness. The reformers were not only piti- 
fully weak, few of them commanded confidence. They 
had not been in office six weeks before it was evident 
that their reelection was impossible. The best of them 
were rank amateurs in the business of politics and gov- 
ernment. Much of their disaster was due no doubt 
to well intentioned ignorance. But very few of them 
stuck to the ship when it began to sink. It would fur- 
nish some sombre amusement to publish the figure 
about how many loud-mouthed reformers went into 
office again two years later — under the machine banner. 

Brace, my chief, as soon as he discovered that the 
walls of Tammany would not fall down at the sound 
of newspaper trumpets, lost heart. He had no further 
interest except to keep himself in the lime-light. Just 
like all his predecessors, he neglected the routine work 
of his office and gave all his attention to sensational 
trials which added to his newspaper notoriety. 

One of the big scandals of the preceding adminis- 
tration, which as much as anything else had stirred 
public indignation against ring politics, had centered 


A MAN’S WORLD 


115 


about a man named Bateson. He called himself a 
“contractor” and got most of the work in grading the 
city streets. There was conclusive evidence to show 
that almost all the work he did was along the routes 
of the street car lines. The scandal had been discovered 
and worked up by one of the newspapers in a most 
exhaustive manner. The facts were clear. The en- 
gineer of the street car company would report to his 
superiors that such and such a street was too steep 
for the profitable operation of their cars. One of the 
directors would call in Bateson. Bateson would take 
up the matter with the mysterious powers on Four- 
teenth Street, the aldermen would vote an appro- 
priation to grade the street; Bateson would get the con- 
tract and after being well paid by the city would get a 
tangible expression of appreciation from the street car 
company. The newspapers had already collected the 
evidence. The fraud was patent. Everyone expected 
Brace to call Bateson to trial at once. And it seemed 
inevitable that from the evidence given in this case, 
indictments could be drawn against both the “Old 
Man” on Fourteenth Street and the bribe giving di- 
rectors of the street car company. 

Brace began on this case with a great flourish of 
trumpets. But one adjournment after another was 
granted by the Tammany judges. It trailed along for 
months. And when at last it was called, the bottom 
had, in some mysterious manner, dropped out of the 
prosecution. Bateson was acquitted. A few months 
later Brace resigned and became counsel for the noto- 
rious traction reorganization. Some recent magazine 
articles have exposed the kind of reform he stood for. 

“Politics” has always seemed to me a very sorry 


116 


A MAN’S WORLD 


sort of business. I found plenty of non-partisan misery 
to occupy all my time. Gradually I fitted myself into 
the life of the Tombs and became a fixtm*e. When the 
new elections brought Tammany back to power, “civil 
service” protected me from the grafters, just as it had 
protected them from their enemies. And so — in that 
ill-smelling place — I have passed my life. 

To one who is unfamiliar with our juggernaut of 
justice it is surprising to find how much work there is 
which a person in my position can do, how many vic- 
tims can be pulled from under the merciless wheels. 
First of all there are the poor, who have no money to 
employ an able lawyer, no means to secure the evidence 
of their innocence. Then there are the “greenhorn” 
immigrants who do not know the language and laws 
of this new country, who do not know enough to notify 
their consuls. Saddest of all — and most easily helped — 
are the youngsters. We did not have a children’s 
court in those days. But most of my time, I think, has 
gone in trying to ease the lot of the innocent wives and 
children of the prisoners. Whether the man is guilty 
or not it is always the family which suffers most. And 
if there had been none of these things, I would have had 
my hands more than full with trying to help the men 
who were acquitted. Look over the report of the crim- 
inal court in your county and see what the average 
length of imprisonment while waiting trial is. It varies 
from place to place. It is seldom less than three weeks. 
And three weeks is a serious matter to the ordinary 
mechanic. About a third of all the people arrested are 
acquitted. They get no compensation for their foot- 
less imprisonment. Besides the loss of wages, it gen- 
erally means a lost job. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


117 


Two stories, which have been told elsewhere, are 
worth retelling, as examples of the varied work I found 
to do. 

It was in the summer of my first year in the Tombs 
that I got interested in the case of a redhaired Italian 
boy named Pietro Sippio. He was only fourteen years 
old and he had been indicted for premeditated murder. 

The prosecution fell to the lot of the most brilliant 
young lawyer on the district attorney’s staff. The 
Sippio family was too poor to employ counsel and Judge 
Ryan, before whom the case was tried, had assigned to 
the defense a famous criminal lawyer. The trial be- 
came at once a tourney of wit between these two men. 
Little Pietro and his fate was a small matter in the 
duel for newspaper advertising. 

The principal witness for the state was Mrs. Casey, 
the mother of the little boy who had been killed. She 
was a widow, a simple, uneducated Irishwoman, who 
earned her living by washing. She told her story with 
every appearance of truthfulness. During the morning 
of the tragic day, she had had a quarrel with Pietro 
in the backyard of the tenement, where both families 
lived. Pietro had thrown some dirt on her washing 
and she had slapped him. Instead of crying as she 
thought an ordinary boy would have done, he had said 
he would “get even” with her. 

When she heard the noon whistles blow in the neigh- 
boring factories, she had gone out on the front sidewalk 
to get her baby for dinner. The youngster was sitting 
on the curbstone and as she stood in the doorway call- 
ing him, a brick, coming from the roof of the tenement, 
struck the baby on the head, killing him instantly. 
She rushed out and — she swore very solemnly — ^looked 


118 


A MAN’S WORLD 


up and saw “the little divil’s red head, jest as plain as I 
.sees yer honor.” 

The counsel for the defense was unable to shake her 
testimony in the least. 

Other witnesses swore that, on hearing Mrs. Casey’s 
cry for help, they had rushed up to the roof and had 
met Mrs. Sippio coming down through the skylight 
with her two younger children, Felicia a girl of eight and 
Angelo, who was five. When they had asked her where 
Pietro was she said she had not seen him. But these 
witnesses were Irish and sided with Mrs. Casey. They 
testified that it was easy to pass from one roof to an- 
other. And it was evidently their theory that Pietro 
had escaped in this manner. 

A few minutes after the tragedy, Pietro had come 
whistling up the street and had walked into the arms 
of the police, who were just starting out to search for 
him. 

In his own defense Pietro testified that after quar- 
reling with Mrs. Casey he had played about in the 
street for some time and then had gone down to the 
river with a crowd of boys for a swim. They had not 
left the water until the noon whistles had warned them 
of dinner time. They had all hurried into their clothes 
and gone home. He swore positively that he had not 
been on the roof during the morning. He evidently 
did not realize the seriousness of his position and was 
rather swaggeringly proud of being the center of so 
much attention. 

Two or three other boys testified that Pietro had 
been swimming with them and had not left the water 
until after the whistles blew. This was an important 
point as the baby had been killed a very few minutes 


A MAN’S WORLD 


119 


after noon. But the district attorney, in a brutal, 
bullying cross-examination, succeeded in rattling one 
of the boys — a youngster of eleven — until he did not 
know his right hand from his left. He broke down en- 
tirely, and sobbingly admitted that perhaps Pietro 
had left before the whistles blew. 

Mrs. Sippio testified that she had not seen Pietro 
after breakfast. She had gone upon the roof about 
half past eleven to beat out some rugs. She had taken 
the two younger children with her. But Pietro had 
not been on the roof. She was a very timid woman, 
so frightened that she forgot most of her scant English. 
But she seemed to be telling the truth. 

After the testimony was in the counsel for the de- 
fense made an eloquent, if rather bombastic plea. 
He turned more often to the desk of the reporters than 
to the panel of jurymen. No one, he said, had given 
any testimony which even remotely implicated Pietro, 
except the grief-stricken and enraged Mrs. Casey. 
He made a peroration on the vengeful traits of the Irish. 
He almost wept over the prospect of eternal damnation 
which awaited Mrs. Casey’s soul on account of her 
perjury. No reasonable man, he concluded, would 
condemn a fly on such unreliable testimony. 

The prosecutor commenced his summing up by re- 
ferring to his position as attorney for the people of the 
state of New York. He said that his able opponent 
was technically called “The counsel for the defense,” 
but that in reality he himself more truly deserved that 
title. He was engaged not in the defense of an individ- 
ual offender, but in that of the whole community of law 
abiding citizens. And in the pursuance of this most 
serious function he could not allow his personal pity 


120 


A MAN’S WORLD 


for the youthful murderer to deflect him from his 
public duty. 

He then gave a picturesque and blood curdling ac- 
count of the Vendetta and Mafla. He called the jury’s 
attention to the well known traditions of vengeance 
and murder among the Italians. 

As for Mrs. Sippio’s testimony — despite his high re- 
gard for the sanctity of an oath — he could not find it 
in his heart to blame this mother who by perjury was 
endangering her own soul to save her son. He was 
more stem in regard to the evidence of the boys. Their 
only excuse for perjury was their youth. They were 
members of a desperate gang, of which Pietro was the 
chief. They were corrupted by the false standards 
of loyalty to their leader, so common among boys of 
the street. 

The only testimony which deserved the serious at- 
tention of the jury was that of Mrs. Casey — the esti- 
mable woman, who had seen her babe foully murdered 
before her eyes. Her identification of Pietro had been 
absolute. 

“I am sorry,” he ended, “for this boy, who, by so 
hideous a crime, has ruined his life at the very outset. 
But you and I, gentlemen of the jury, are bound by 
oath to consider only the cold facts. The judge may, 
if he thinks it wise, be merciful in imposing sentence. 
But your sole function is to discover truth. Here is a 
boy of fiery disposition and revengeful race. He vowed 
vengeance. Some one must have thrown the brick. No 
one else had the motive. Either the defendant is 
guilty as charged in the indictment or the brick fell 
from heaven.” 

The law explicitly states that a person charged with 


A MAN’S WORLD 


121 


crime, must be given the benefit of any “reasonable 
doubt.” In the face of the manifestly conflicting testi- 
mony, I think every one in court was surprised when 
the jury returned a verdict of “guilty.” 

I had not then been long enough in the Tombs to 
get used to it. I had not become hardened. The 
tragedy of this case amazed me. A little boy of fourteen 
condemned of deliberate murder! But the thing which 
impressed me most was the way the lawyers in the court 
room rushed up to congratulate the prosecutor for hav- 
ing won so doubtful a case. It would be revolting 
enough to me if any one should congratulate me on 
having sent an adult to the gallows. But this little boy 
of fourteen .... 

I went over the Bridge of Sighs and talked to Pietro 
in his cell. If ever a boy impressed me as telling a 
straightforward story he did. I was convinced that he 
had been at the riverside when the Casey baby was 
killed. 

After lunch I went up to the scene of the tragedy and 
my faith in Pietro’s innocence was considerably shaken 
although not overthrown by my talk with Mrs. Casey. 
She was angry, of course, but she did not seem mali- 
cious or vindictive. As I talked with her in her squalid 
basement room, full of steam from the tubs of soiled 
clothing, I could not doubt her sincerity. She really 
believed that Pietro had killed her child. Wiping the 
suds from her powerful arms, she led me out on the 
sidewalk and showed me the place where the baby had 
been sitting and pointed out where she had seen the 
devilish red head above the coping. 

The idea flashed into my mind that a boy would have 
to be surprisingly clever to throw a brick from that 


122 


A MAN’S WORLD 


height and hit a baby. With Mrs. Casey following me, 
I went upon the roof. The chimneys were in a di- 
lapidated condition and a number of loose brick lay 
about. I was a fairly good ball player at college, but 
when I tried to hit a water plug on the curb stone, six 
stories below, I over shot at least eight feet. I asked 
Mrs. Casey to try and her brick lit in the middle of the 
street. I called up some of the boys, who were watch- 
ing my operations from the street, and offered them a 
quarter if they could hit the water plug. Their attempts 
were no better than mine. 

A little further along the low coping some bricks 
were piled where children had evidently been building 
houses with them. I asked Mrs. Casey to push one of 
them over, easily as if by accident. It fell out a little 
way from the wall and crashed down fair on the curb- 
ing. 

“Mrs. Casey,” I said, “I don’t think Pietro threw 
that brick. He couldn’t have hit the baby if he had 
tried. Somebody pushed it over by accident.” 

She stood for some seconds looking down over the 
wall, shaking her head uncertainly. 

“Faith, and I’d think ye were right, sir,” she said at 
last, “If I hadn’t seen his red head, sir, jest as plain as 
I sees yours.” 

And as we went down stairs, she kept repeating “I 
sure seen his red head.” She was evidently convinced 
of it. 

I went to see Mrs. Sippio. She had moved to another 
tenement, because of the hostility of the Irish neighbors. 
I found Mr. Sippio at home taking care of his wife, she 
was half hysterical from the shame and her grief over 
Pietro’s fate. But she told me her story just as simply 


A MAN’S WORLD 


123 


and convincingly as had Mrs. Casey. Pietro had not 
been on the roof. There had been only Felicia and 
Angelo. I was on the point of leaving in discourage- 
ment. Apparently one of the women was lying. I 
could not guess which. I had gained nothing but a 
conviction that the brick could not have been thrown 
with an intent to kill. And that would be a very weak 
plea against the verdict of a jury. Just as I was getting 
up, there was a patter of feet in the hall-way. Mrs. 
Sippio’s face lit up. “It is the children,” she said. As 
they rushed noisily into the room the whole mystery was 
cleared up. It had not occurred to me — nor to any one- 
that there might be two redheaded boys in the same 
Italian family. But Angelo’s hair was even more flam- 
ing than Pietro’s. 

I took him up in my lap and amused him until I had 
won his confidence. And when he was thinking about 
other things, I suddenly asked him. 

“Angelo, when that brick fell off the roof the other 
day, why didn’t you tell your mother?” 

For a moment he was confused and then began to 
whimper. He had been afraid of being whipped. I 
gave a whoop and reassuring the family, I rushed down 
town and caught Judge Ryan, just as he was leaving his 
chambers. He listened to me eagerly, for he was as 
tenderhearted a man as I have ever known and he had 
been deeply horrified at the idea of having to sentence 
such a youngster for premeditated murder. 

The attorneys were sununoned to the judge’s cham- 
bers, and — I guess that the “pathos” writers of the 
newspapers were notified. For the next morning they 
attended court in force. The district attorney made 
a touching speech. He was grandiloquently glad to 


124 


A MAN’S WORLD 


announce that new evidence had been discovered which 
cleared the defendant from all suspicion. The judge 
set aside the verdict of the jury. The district attorney 
said that Mrs. Casey had so evidently mistaken Angelo 
for his older brother that there was no use having a new 
trial and Pietro was discharged. In making a few re- 
marks on the case, Judge Ryan mentioned my name 
and thanked me personally for my part in the matter. 
With increasing frequency he began to call on me for 
assistance in other cases and in time the other judges 
took notice of my existence. I found my hands more 
than full. 

Very often I was able in a similar manner to unearth 
evidence, which the defendants were too poor and 
ignorant or the lawyers too lazy to obtain. 

But it was in another class of cases that I proved of 
greatest utility to the judges. A large proportion of 
the prisoners plead guilty, without demanding a trial. 
If the whole matter is thrashed out before a jury, the 
trial judge hears all the evidence and so gets some idea 
of the motives of the crime, of the personality and en- 
vironment of the accused. But when a prisoner pleads 
guilty, practically no details come out in court and unless 
the judge has some special investigation made he must 
impose sentence at haphazard. Ryan, almost always 
asked me to look into such cases. The other judges — 
with the exception of O’Neil — did so frequently. I 
would visit the prisoner in his cell and get his story, 
listen to what the police had to say, and then make a 
personal investigation to settle disputed points. 

As time went on Ryan came to rely more and more 
on my judgment. He felt, I think, that I was honest; 
that I could not be bribed and that I was more likely 


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to err on the side of mercy than otherwise. His easy 
going kindliness was satisfied with this and he was 
only too glad to let his responsibilities slip on to my 
shoulders. In the last years before he was elevated to 
the Supreme Court, he practically let me sentence 
most of his men. Except in the cases where political 
influences intervened, my written reports determined 
the prisoner’s fate. 

Of course I had to manage his susceptibilities. If 
I had presumed to suggest definitely what sentence he 
should impose he would have taken offense. He was 
very sensitive about his dignity. But I worked out a 
formal phraseology which did not ruffle his pride and 
accomplished what I intended. After stating the facts 
of the case I would end up with a sort of code phrase. 
If I wanted the judge to give the man another chance 
under a suspended sentence, I would say: “Under the 
circumstances, I believe that the defendant is deserving 
the utmost leniency. I am convinced that the arrest 
and the imprisonment which he has already suffered 
have taught him a salutary lesson which he will never 
forget.” From that as the circumstances warranted I 
could go to the other extreme: “During my investiga- 
tion of this case, which has been seriously limited be- 
cause of lack of time, I have been able to find very little 
in this man’s favor.” 

Every time I had to present such a report as this 
I felt defeated. It meant that the prisoner was an old 
offender, hardened to a life of professional crime. And 
that I could see no hope of reformation. But if I had 
not accepted such defeats, when circumstances com- 
pelled them, the judges would very quickly have lost 
confidence in my pleas for mercy. 


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I was valuable to the judges because I relieved them 
from worry. Whenever anyone approached them on 
behalf of a prisoner, they shrugged their shoulders and 
referred the suppliant to me. Now-a-days we have a 
probation law and such work as I have been describing 
is legalized. But in the early days, when I had no offi- 
cial sanction I found my position very embarrassing. 
Without having been in any way elected to office I was 
actually exercising a power which is supposed to be 
the gift of the voters. However — like so many things 
in our haphazard government — my position, extra-legal 
as it was, grew out of the sheer necessity of the case. 
The theory is that our judges shall be jurists. And a 
knowledge of the law does not fit one for the responsi- 
bility of deciding how we shall treat our criminals. In 
the old days when the law frankly punished offenders 
it was a simple matter and perhaps not too much to 
ask of judges. But today when we are beginning the 
attempt to reform those individuals who endanger 
society, the business of imposing sentence requires not 
so much a knowledge of law as familiarity with psychol- 
ogy, medicine and sociology. Although an expert in 
none of these lines, I was accepted as a makeshift. 
The law did not provide for the employment of specially 
trained men to assist the judges. I was informally 
permitted to entirely neglect the ordinary work of a 
county detective and give all my time to the courts. 

The danger in such happy-go-lucky arrangements is 
that of graft. I could have doubled or quadrupled my 
salary with impunity. The “shyster” lawyers, who 
infest the Tombs tried for several years to buy my inter- 
cession for their clients. I had to be constantly on my 
guard to keep them from fooling me. And when they 


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127 


found that they could not reach me in this manner, 
they tried industriously to discredit me, to trick 
me into some suspicious conditions so they could in- 
timidate me. More than once they set women on my 
trail. 

The politicians also tried to use me. I received a 
letter one day from the “Old Man” asking me to inter- 
cede for a friend of his. I wrote back that I would 
investigate carefully. A couple of days later I sent 
another letter containing the prisoner’s record, he had 
been twice in state prison and many times arrested. 
“Under the circumstances,” I wrote “I cannot rec- 
ommend mercy in this case.” 

The next day one of the “Old Man’s” lieutenants 
met me in the corridor and leading me into a corner, 
told me I was a fool. When what he called “reason” 
failed to shake me, he became abusive and threatened 
to have me “fired.” I took the whole matter to Ryan. 
He told me not to worry, that he would talk it over with 
the “Old Man.” I do not know what passed between 
them. But after that I had no more trouble from Four- 
teenth Street. Whenever I saw the “Old Man,” he 
gave me a cordial nod. Frequently his runners would 
hand me one of his cards with a penciled note, “See 
what you can do for this friend of mine and oblige.” 
But with one or two exceptions the “friend” turned out 
to be deserving. One day he sent word that he would 
like to see me personally. I called on him in Tammany 
Hall. He thanked me for “helping out” one of his 
friends and told me that the city, in some of its depart- 
ments, or some of his “contracting friends” were always 
taking on new hands and that he would try to find a 
place for any man I sent him. This was an immense 


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help to me in my work and a God-send to many a man 
who had lost his job because of a baseless arrest. 

So I gradually found a place of usefulness in the life 
of the Tombs. 

Another typical case happened years later. I would 
not have known how to handle it at first. The defend- 
ant was a Norwegian named Nora Lund. She was 
about seventeen and the sweetest, most beautiful young 
girl I have ever seen in the Tombs. She was employed 
in one of the smartest uptown stores. It had an estab- 
lished reputation as a dry goods house. The founder 
had died some years before, a stock company had taken 
it over and was developing it into a modern department 
store. Besides the old lines of goods they were carrying 
silverware, stationery, furniture and so forth. Their 
patrons were most of the very well to do classes. 

Just inside the main entrance was an especial show 
case, where a variety of specialties were exhibited. 
Nora presided over this display and it was her business 
to direct customers to the counters they sought and 
answer all manner of questions. She had been chosen 
for this post because of her beauty and her sweet, lady- 
like manners. If you asked her where the ribbons 
were for sale, you carried away with you a pleasing 
memory of her great blue eyes and her ready smile. 

She was paid six dollars a week. Her father, who had 
been a printer, was dead. Her mother worked in a 
candy factory. A sister of fourteen was trying to learn 
bookkeeping at home while she took care of the two 
younger children. 

Nora’s wage, together with the mother’s, was enough 
to keep them in cleanliness, if not in comfort, and to 
put by a trifie every week for the education of the boy 


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129 


whom the women fondly dreamed of sending to school. 
But the mother fell sick. Gradually the little pile of 
savings was swallowed up. Mrs. Lund needed expensive 
medicine. And six dollars a week is very little for a 
family of five, especially when one is sick and another 
must always have fresh clean linen collars and cuffs. 
At the store they insisted that the girls should always 
be “neat and presentable.” The fourteen year old 
sister went to work looking after a neighbor’s baby, 
but she only got two dollars a week and two meals. 

When the savings had been exhausted Nora took 
her troubles to the superintendent. She did not want 
to seem to be asking for charity, she begged to be given 
some harder work so she could earn more. It was re- 
fused. That week Wednesday there was nothing in 
the house to eat. The druggist and tradesmen refused 
further credit, and the rent was due. Nora went again 
to the superintendent and asked to have her wages 
paid in advance or at least the three dollars she had 
already earned. The superintendent was angry at her 
importunity. 

When Nora left the store that evening she carried 
with her a box containing a dozen silver spoons. Un- 
fortunately she did not know any of the regular and 
reliable “receivers of stolen goods,” so she had to take 
a chance on the first pawnshop she came to. The man 
suspected her, asked her to wait a moment and tele- 
phoned for the police. He kept her at the counter with 
his dickering until the officer came. Nora did not know 
the first thing about Isdng and broke down at the first 
question. 

If she had been a man I would have encountered 
her sooner, but I very seldom went into the women’s 


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prison. It is part of the burden of their sex, I suppose, 
but the women one generally finds in prison are the 
most doleful spectacle on earth. Having once lost their 
self respect they sink to an infinitely lower level than 
men do. With the first enthusiasm of my early days 
I used often to dare the horror of that place. But I 
soon recognized my defeat before its hopelessness and 
gave it a wide berth. So I did not hear of Nora when 
she first came to the Tombs. It was two weeks before 
her case was called. It came up before Ryan. I was 
not in court when she was arraigned, but the next morn- 
ing I found a note in my box from the judge. 

“Please look into the case of Nora Lund, grand 
larceny in the second degree. She plead guilty 
yesterday but she does not look like a thief. I re- 
manded the case till Wednesday to give you plenty of 
time.” 

Before Wednesday I had the facts I have already 
related. It was pitiful to see Mrs. Lund. The shame 
and disgrace to the family name hurt her much more 
than the starvation which threatened the household. 
She was really sick, but she came down every morning 
to cry with her daughter. They were in a bad way at 
home, as Nora’s wage had stopped since her arrest. I 
fixed them up with some food, squared the landlord, 
and did what I could to cheer them. Ryan had already 
shown his sympathy and I allowed myself to do, what 
I made it a rule never to do. I practically promised 
the mother that Nora would be released. 

I prepared my report with extra care. It was an 
unusually good case. All the goods had been restored. 
The firm had lost no money. I had rarely had an op- 
portunity to report so strongly my belief that the of- 


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131 


fender could be safely discharged. I recommended the 
“utmost leniency” with a light heart. 

When the case was called, I handed up my report to 
the judge. He read it rapidly as if he had already made 
up his mind to let her go. 

“You’re sure its the first offense?” he asked per- 
functorily. 

I assured him it was. 

“All right,” he said, “I guess suspended sen- 
tence . . . .” 

The clerk stepped up and gave the judge a card. 

“Your honor,” he said, “a gentleman would like to 
speak to you about this case, before you impose sen- 
tence.” 

The man was called up and introduced himself as the 
regular attorney of the complainants. He was a mem- 
ber of one of the great down-town law firms. He had the 
assurance of manner of a very successful professional 
man. His clients, he said, had asked him to lay some in- 
formation before the court. In the last few years they 
had lost a great many thousand dollars through such 
petty theft. The amount of this loss was steadily in- 
creasing. Most of the thefts were undiscovered because 
the employees protected one another. They seemed to 
have lost all the old fashioned loyalty to the firm. The 
directors’ attention had been unpleasantly called to this 
very considerable outlet and they had decided to re- 
spectfully call it to the attention of the courts. If two 
or three offenders were severely punished it would have 
a salutary effect on the morals of their entire force. 

My heart sank. I knew how the judge would take it. 
He was always impressed by people of evident wealth. 
I am sure that he thought of God as a multi-millionaire. 


132 


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He handed my report to the lawyer. He read it half 
through and returned it. It could not, he said, affect 
the attitude of the complainants. They were not inter- 
ested in the family life of Nora Lund, but in the honesty 
of employee No. 21,334. Their view-point was entirely 
impersonal. “Even if my clients wanted to be lenient, 
they could not, in justice to the stockholders. It is 
purely a business proposition. The losses have been 
very heavy.” 

“Are you asking his honor,” I said, “to punish this 
girl for the thefts of the others you did not catch?” 

He ignored my question and went on telling the Judge 
that xmless something was done this sort of thing would 
increase until business was impossible. 

“Our whole force,” he said, “know of this crime and 
are watching the result. If no punishment follows 
there is sure to be a big increase of theft. But if she 
is sent to state prison it will greatly reduce this item of 
loss.” 

“Your honor,” I broke in, thoroughly angry, “This 
is utterly unfair. He whines because the employees are 
not loyal. How much loyalty do they expect to buy at 
six dollars a week? They figure out just how little they 
can pay their people and keep them from the necessity 
of stealing. This time they figured too low, and are 
trying to put all the blame on the girl. If they paid 
honest wages they might have some right to come into 
court. But when they let their clerks starve they ought 
not to put silver in their charge. Its . . . .” 

“Hold on, officer,” Ryan interrupted, “There’s a 
great deal in their point of view. Our whole penal sys- 
tem is built on the deterrent idea. The state does not 
inflict penalties to repay the wrong done it by an act of 


A MAN’S WORLD 


133 


crime, but to deter others from committing like crimes. 
As long as the complainants take this view of the case 
I cannot let her go without some punishment.” 

“Punishment?” I broke in again. “ I hope we will 
never be punished so bitterly. The shame of her arrest 
and imprisonment is already far in excess of her wrong 
doing. The firm did not lose a cent and they want her 
sent to state prison.” 

“I won’t send so young a girl to state prison,” the 
judge said, “But I cannot let her go free. I’ll send her 
to one of the religious disciplinary institutions.” 

I asked for a few days adjoiu'nment so I could lay 
the matter before the members of the firm personally. 

“The delay would be useless,” the attorney put in. 
“My clients have no personal feelings in the matter. 
It is simply a carefully reasoned business policy.” 

I persisted that I would like to try. The judge rapped 
with his gavel. 

“Remanded till tomorrow morning.” 

As we walked out of the court room, the attorney 
condescendingly advised me not to waste much time 
on this case. “Its useless,” he said. But I did not 
want to give up without a fight. 

When I tried to see the members of the firm, I 
found that my opponent had stolen a march on me by 
telephoning to warn them of my mission. Their office 
secretaries told me that they were very busy, that they 
already knew my business and did not care to go into 
the matter with me. 

I was acquainted with the city editor of one of the 
large morning papers and I had found that the judges 
were very susceptible to newspaper criticism. More 
than once a properly placed story would make them 


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see a case in a new light. I found a vacant desk in the 
reporters’ room and wrote up Nora in the most livid 
style I could manage — “soulless corporation,” “under- 
paid slaves” and such phrases. 

“It’s a good story,” the city editor said, “Too bad 
there isn’t a Socialist paper to run it. But we can’t 
touch it. They’re the biggest advertisers we’ve got. 
I’m sorry. It certainly is a sad case. I wish you’d 
give this to the mother.” 

He handed me a bank-note. But I told him to go 
to the father of yellow journalism. It was not money 
I wanted. I stamped out of his office, angry and dis- 
couraged. But my promise to Mrs. Lund, to get Nora 
out, made it impossible for me to give up. I walked up 
the street racking my brains for some scheme. Sud- 
denly an inspiration came. They would not listen to 
me. Perhaps I could make money talk. 

My small deposits were in an up-town bank. It did 
not have a large commercial business, but specialized 
on private and household accounts. The cashier was a 
fraternity mate of mine. With a little urging I got from 
him a list of depositors who had large accounts at the 
store where Nora had worked. I picked out the names 
of the women I knew to be interested in various char- 
ities and borrowed a telephone. 

It is hard to be eloquent over a telephone. The little 
black rubber mouth-piece is a discouraging thing to 
plead with, but I stuck to it all the afternoon. As soon 
as I got connection with some patron of the store, I 
told her about Nora’s plight — most of them remem- 
bered her face. I tried to make them realize how 
desperately little six dollars a week is. I told the story 
of her hard struggle to keep the home going, how the 


A MAN’S WORLD 


135 


firm had refused to give her a raise and were now trying 
to send her to state prison. I spoke as strongly as 
might be about personal responsibility. The firm paid 
low wages so that their patrons might buy silk stockings 
at a few cents less per pair. And low wages had driven 
Nora to crime. I laid it on as heavily as I dared and 
asked them to call up the manager and members of 
the firm — to get them personally — and protest against 
their severity towards Nora. I urged them to spread 
the story among their friends and get as many of them 
as possible to threaten to withdraw their trade. 

I started this campaign about three in the afternoon 
and kept it up till after business hours. It bore fruit. 
Some of the women, I found out afterwards, went 
further than I had suggested and called on the wives 
of the firm. I imagine that the men, who had refused 
to see me, did not spend a peaceful or pleasant afternoon 
and evening. 

In the morning, when Nora’s case was called, the 
attorney made a touching speech about the quality of 
mercy and how to err is human, to forgive divine. He 
said that the firm he represented could not find heart 
to prosecute this damsel in distress and that if the court 
would be merciful and give her another chance they 
would take her back in their employment. Judge Ryan 
was surprised, but very glad to discharge her. However, 
I was able to find her a much better place to work. 

Her story is a sad commentary on our system of 
justice. The court did not care to offend a group of 
wealthy men. The press did not dare to. The only 
way to get justice for this girl was by appealing to the 
highest court — the power of money. 

It is always hard for me to write about our method 


136 


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of dealing with crime in restrained and temperate 
language — the whole system is too utterly vicious. I 
had not been many weeks in the Tombs before I was 
guilty of contempt of court. 

Four of the five judges in general sessions were 
machine men. It was rare that their judgments were in- 
fluenced by their political affiliations; in the great 
majority of the cases they were free to dispense what 
happened to strike them as justice. It is simpler for the 
organization to “fix” things in the police courts where 
there are no juries. But once in a while a man would 
come up to us who “had a friend.” The “Old Man” 
on Fourteenth Street would send down his orders and 
one of these four judges would arrange the matter. The 
impressive thing about it was the cynical frankness. 
Everybody knew what was happening. 

The fifth judge, O’Neil, was a Scotchman. He was 
said to be — and I believe was — incorruptible. He had 
been swept into office on a former wave of reform, and 
had no dealings with the machine. But he was utterly 
unfit to be on the bench. A few weeks after I was 
sworn in, I saw a phase of his character which was 
worse than “graft.” 

A man was brought before him for “assault” — a 
simple exchange of fisticuffs. In general such cases are 
treated as a joke. Two men have a fight — then they 
race to the police station. The one who gets there first 
is the complainant, the slower footed one is the defend- 
ant. Each brings a cloud of witnesses to court to 
swear that the other was the aggressor. It is hopeless 
to try to place the blame. The penal code fixes a maxi- 
mum sentence of one year and five hundred dollars 
fine, but unless some especial malice has been shown, 


A MAN’S WORLD 


137 


the judges generally discharge the prisoner with a per- 
functory lecture or, at most, give them ten days. 

This man had an especially good record. He had 
worked satisfactorily for several years in the same place, 
his wife and her three small children were entirely de- 
pendent upon his earnings. O’Neil skimmed over his 
recommendations listlessly, until his eye caught a 
sentence which told the nature of the man’s employ- 
ment. He stiffened up with a jerk. 

“Are you a janitor?” he thundered. 

“Yes, your honor.” 

“Well, I tell you, sir, janitors must be taught their 
place! There is no more impudent, offensive class of 
men in this city. This morning, sir, there was no heat 
in my apartment, and when my wife complained the 
janitor was insolent to her! Insulted her! My wife! 
When I went downstairs he insulted me, sir! The 
janitor insulted me, I say! He even threatened to 
strike me as you have wantonly assaulted this reputable 
citizen here, the complainant. It is time the public 
was protected from janitors. I regret that the law 
limits the punishment I can give you. The coiirt 
sentences you, sir, to the maximum. One year and 
five hundred dollars!” 

The outburst was so sudden, so evidently a matter of 
petty spite, that there was a hush all over the court. 

“What’s the matter?” his honor snapped. “Call up 
the next case.” 

Of course this sentence would have been overthrown 
in any higher court, but the man had no money. Such 
things did not happen very often, but frequently enough 
to keep us ever reminded of their imminent possibility. 

I have sixty fat note-books which record my work in 


138 


A MAN’S WORLD 


the Tombs. Almost every item might be quoted here 
to show how little by little contempt of court grew in my 
mind. It crystallized not so much because of the rela- 
tively rare cases where innocent men were sent to prison, 
as because of the continual commonplace farce of it. 

Very early I learned — as the lawyers all knew — that 
considerations of abstract justice were foreign to the 
Tombs. Each judge had his foible. It was more im- 
portant to know these than the law. Judges Mclvor 
and Bell were Grand Army men. Bell was always easy 
on veterans. He had a- stock speech — “I am sorry 
to see a man who has fought for his country in your 
distressing condition. I will be as lenient as the law 
allows.” Mclvor, if he saw a G. A. R. button on a 
man before him would shout, ‘T am pained and grieved 
to see a man so dishonor the old uniform,” and would 
give him the maximum. 

Ryan, the most venal, the most servile machine man 
of the five, had a beautiful and intense love for his 
mother. A child of the slum, he had supported his 
mother since he was fourteen, had climbed up from the 
gutter to the bench. And filial love, like his own, 
outweighed any amount of moral turpitude with him. 
When I found a man in the Tombs who seemed to me 
innocent, I did not prepare a brief on this aspect of the 
case. I looked up his mother, and persuaded the clerk 
to put the case on Ryan’s calendar. If I could get the 
old woman rigged up in a black silk dress and a poke 
bonnet, if I could arrange for two old-fashioned love- 
locks to hang down before her ears, the trick was turned. 
All she had to do was to cry a little and say, “He’s 
been a good son to his old mother, yer honor.” 

The cases were supposed to be distributed among the 


A MAN’S WORLD 


139 


judges in strict rotation. It was, in fact, a misdemeanor 
for the clerk to juggle with the calendar. But the larg- 
est part of a lawyer’s value depended on his ability 
to persuade the clerk to put his client before a judge 
who would be lenient towards his offense. 

O’Neil believed that a lady should be above suspicion. 
So when a woman was accused of crime, she was cer- 
tainly not a lady, and probably guilty. It was for the 
good of the community to lock her up. Of course 
whenever a lawyer had a woman client his first act 
was to “fix” the clerk so that the case would not be 
put down before O’Neil. 

Yet I would be eminently unfair to the people of the 
Tombs, if I spoke only of their evil side. Of course this 
was the side I first saw. But by the end of a year I had 
established myself. Once they had lost their fear that 
I was trying to interfere with their means of livelihood — 
a fear shared by the judges as well as the screws — hostil- 
ity gave place to tolerance, and in some cases to respect 
and a certain measure of friendship. I began to think 
of them, as they did of themselves, as dual personalities. 
There was sinister symbolism in the putting on of the 
black robes by the judges. The screws out of uniform, 
in off hours, were very different beings from the screws 
on duty. 

It is a commonplace that machine politicians are 
big-hearted. They listened to any story I could tell 
of touching injustice, often went down in their pockets 
to help the victim. I have never met more sentimental 
men. All it needed to start them was a little “heart 
interest.” Frequently Big Jim, the gate man, would 
raise ten or fifteen dollars from the other screws to help 
out one of my men. 


140 


A MAN’S WORLD 


Judge Ryan met me one day on the street and in- 
vited me into a saloon. There began a very real friend- 
ship. Off the bench he was a most expansive man; 
he had wonderful power of personal anecdote. In the 
story of his up-struggle from the gutter, his mother 
on his shoulders, he was naive in telling of incidents 
which to a man of my training seemed criminal. He 
owed his first opportunity, the start towards his later 
advancement, to Tweed. And he was as loyal to him 
as to his mother. The soul of the slum was in his story. 
It was an interpretation of the ethics which grow up 
where the struggle for existence is bitter. An ethics 
which is foul with the stink of fetid tenements, wizened 
with hunger, distorted with fear. 

The attitude of the people of the Tombs to this dual 
life of theirs, the insistence with which they kept sepa- 
rate their professional and personal life, was shown 
clearly when a young assistant district attorney broke 
the convention. He brought his wife to court! He 
was a youngster, it was his first big case, he wanted her 
to hear his eloquence. The indignation was general. 
I happened to be talking to Big Jim, the gate man, 
when one of the screws brought the news. 

“What?” Jim exploded. “Brought his wife down 

here? The son of a ! Say. If my old woman 

came within ten blocks of the place — or any of the 
kids — I’d knock their blocks off. Go on. Yer kid- 
ding me.” 

When they insisted that it was true, he scratched his 
head disgustedly and kept reiterating his belief in the 
chap’s canine ancestry. Two hours later, when I was 
going out of the Tombs, he stopped me. It was still 
on his mind. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


141 


“Say,” he said, “what d’ye think of that son of 
a ?” 

Ill 

It did not take me very long to see that the trouble 
with our criminal courts goes deeper than the graft or 
ill-temper of the judges. Day after day the realization 
grew upon me that the system itself is wrong at bot- 
tom. 

A man can do a vicious thing now and then without 
complete moral disintegration. It is constant repeti- 
tion of the act which turns him into a vicious man. 
Brown may once in a while lose his temper and strike 
his wife, and still be, on the whole, an estimable fel- 
low. But if he makes a regular habit of blacking her 
eye every Saturday night, we would hold him suspect 
in all relations. We would not only question his fit- 
ness to bring up children, we would doubt his veracity, 
distrust him in money matters. 

The more I have been in court the stronger grows the 
conviction that there is something inherently vicious 
in passing criminal judgment on our fellow men. A 
Carpenter who lived in Palestine two thousand years 
ago thought on this matter as I do. His doctrine about 
throwing stones is explicit. If he was right in saying 
“Judge not,” we cannot expect any high morality from 
our judges. The constant repetition of evil inevitably 
degrades. 

Unless we can expect our judges to be omniscient — 
and no one of them is so fatuous as to believe himself 
infallible — ^we are asking them to gamble with justice, 
to play dice with men’s souls. We give them the whole 
power of the state to enforce their guesses. The count- 


142 


A MAN’S WORLD 


ers with which they play are human beings — not only 
individual offenders, but whole families, innocent 
women and children. Such an occupation — as a steady 
job — will necessarily degrade them. It would change 
the Christ Himself. . . . But he said very definitely 
that He would not do it. 

However, my work in the Tombs has not made me a 
pessimist. Science has conquered the old custom of 
flogging lunatics. The increase of knowledge must 
inevitably do away with our barbaric penal codes, 
with cellular confinement and electrocution. An en- 
lightened community will realize that the whole mediae- 
val idea of punishing each other is not only a sin — ac- 
cording to Christ — ^but a blunder, a rank economic 
extravagance, as useless as it is costly. We will learn 
to protect ourselves from the losses and moral con- 
tagions of crime as we do from infectious diseases. 
Our prisons we will discard for hospitals, our judges 
will become physicians, our “screws” we will turn into 
trained nurses. 

The present system is epileptic. It works out with 
unspeakable cruelty to those who are suspected of 
crime — and their families — ^it results in the moral ruin 
of those we employ to protect us, and it is a failure. 
The amount of money which society expends in its 
war against crime is stupendous — and crime increases. 
All statistics from every civilized country. . . . 

But this personal narrative is not the place for me 
to discuss in detail my convictions in regard to crimi- 
nology. 


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143 


IV 

The influence of the Tombs on my way of thinking 
was slow and cumulative, here a little and there a 
httle. I got a more sudden insight into some of the 
ways of the world, some of its stupidities and pretenses, 
from the peculiar circumstances under which Benson 
and I were thrown out of the settlement. I had been 
there almost two years when the crash came. In this 
affair, I was little more than the tail of his kite. That 
is the fact I wish to emphasize. Benson was I think 
beyond any doubt, the most valuable “resident” in 
the Children’s House. It was not only that he gave 
much money into the general treasury and that he 
gave far more to such subsidiary enterprises as his 
Arbeiter Studenten Verein, all of which gave added 
prestige to the settlement, but also his personality 
was a great asset. Through his professional and social 
connections he was continually recruiting new support- 
ers. And certainly to the people of the neighborhood, 
he was the most popular of us all. And yet to pre- 
serve certain stupid ideas of respectability, Benson was 
sacrificed. 

The Jewish population — ^penniless refugees from 
Russian massacres — had been growing rapidly in our 
district. They had almost entirely driven out the 
Germans and Irish. And as a result of their intense 
poverty, prostitution was becoming frightful. There 
were red lights all about us. To the thoughtful Jews 
this had become the only political issue. The machine 
was cynically frank in its toleration of vice. Two years 
before a man named Root had been elected congress- 
man on the reform ticket. It was pretty generally 


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knowB that he had used his time in office to make peace 
with the machine. And although he still talked of 
reform, he was so friendly with the enemy that they 
had nominated a figure-head named O’Brien. But this 
Democratic candidate was only for appearances, we all 
knew that Root was to be re-elected and that Tammany 
votes were promised him. 

Benson shared my hatred of hypocrisy. We often 
talked over this political tangle. 

“I’d like to get the evidence against him,” Norman 
said one night. “Nothing I’d like better than to shoot 
some holes into his double-faced schemes.” 

I gathered a good deal of information, which if it 
was not legal evidence, was certainly convincing. The 
Tombs was a great place for political gossip. I was al- 
most the only person there at this time who was not a 
Tammany man. And as in my two years of work I 
had taken no interest in politics, I was considered in- 
nocuous. From scraps of conversation I learned that 
there had been a meeting between Root and the Old 
Man and some treaty made between them. I could 
guess at the terms. The organization was to throw 
enough votes to elect Root, and he was to keep too busy 
in Washington to interfere in local affairs. But I did 
not dare to ask questions, and had no idea when or 
where the agreement had been reached. By the barest 
chance I was able to fill in these details'. 

Coming up the Bowery late one night, I ran into a 
crowd who had made a circle around two girls who were 
fighting. Just as I arrived on the scene one of the girls 
called out 

“Charley — give me a knife.” 

Her cadet handed her one with a very ugly looking 


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145 


blade. I seldom used my right as county detective 
to make arrests. But as this seemed to threaten serious 
bloodshed, I broke up the fight and collared the cadet. 
He turned out to be a man of some importance in pol- 
itics, a runner for “The Old Man.” Two or three times 
he had been arrested, but his pull had always got him 
off. 

He was half drunk and in a great funk over the seri- 
ous charge I said I would make against him. As I was 
jerking him along towards the station house, he threat- 
ened me with dire consequences if I ran him in — said 
he was a friend of the Old Man. I pretended not to 
believe him, and in his effort to convince me that he 
really was protected, he let the cat out of the bag. 
He had been the messenger from the “Old Man” to 
Root, and had arranged for the meeting between them. 
It had taken place on the evening of September third, 
in the back room of Billy Bryan’s saloon. He did not 
know what had happened at the meeting, the only 
person present beside the two principals had been a 
“heeler” of Root’s, named “Piggy” Breen. There was 
no use in arresting a man with his “pull,” so I turned 
him loose. 

I hurried back to the settlement and telephoned for 
Benson at his club. He brought along Maynard to give 
us legal advice. Maynard was an erratic millionaire. 
One-third of the year he played polo, one third he spent 
in entering his 75-foot sloop in various club regattas, 
and the rest of the time he lived in the city, leading 
cotillions at night and maintaining a charity law office 
in the day-time. He was also a trustee of the settle- 
ment. He was wildly indignant over the story of Root’s 
treacher3^ 


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“We can defeat Root, dead easy,” Benson said. 
‘ ‘ It’s a cinch. Publicity has never been tried in politics” 
(as far as I know, Benson invented this term “pub- 
licity,” now so commonly applied to organized adver- 
tising) — “it’s a cinch. In less than twenty-four hours 
everybody in the district will know he’s a crook.” 

“What reform man can we get to run in his place?” 
Maynard asked. 

‘ ‘ Hell ! ’ ’ Benson said. “We haven’t time to nominate 
anybody — election is only a week off. I don’t care who’s 
elected so we put Root out of business.” 

“Well, but,” Maynard protested, “we don’t want to 
throw the influence of the settlement in favor of Tam- 
many Hall.” 

“We don’t need to. There must be some other 
candidates — Socialist or Prohibition — ^just so he isn’t 
a red-light grafter.” 

“There isn’t any Prohibition ticket,” I said. “The 
Socialist candidate is named Lipsky.” 

“All right,” said Benson, “we’ll elect Lipsky.” 

Maynard went up in the air. Help elect a Socialist ! 
He did not believe in political assassinations. 

“Oh, devil!” Benson snapped. “Would you rather 
see one of these cadet politicians in office than an honest 
working man? I don’t know who this man Lipsky is, 
like as not a fool who sees visions. But the Socialists 
never nominate crooks. What we want is an honest 
man.” 

Maynard, however, did not believe in community of 
wives, felt it necessary to protect the sanctity of the 
home — even at the cost of prostitution. And so he 
left us. 

I wish I could remember half the things Benson said 


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147 


about Maynard after he had deserted us. I have sel- 
dom seen anything more invigorating than Benson 
mad. But he did not let his indignation interfere with 
business. It was far along towards morning, but he 
set to work at once. He wrote to Lipsky promising 
to support him, and then began sketching cartoons and 
posters. 

One was a picture of Root selling a girl in “parlor 
clothes” to “The Old Man.” Another read: 

“VOTE FOR LIPSKY 

if you have a daughter! 

If you vote Democratic, you 

Vote for the RED LIGHTS! 

If you vote Republican, you 

Vote for the CADETS! 

VOTE THE SOCIALIST TICKET, and you 
VOTE FOR DECENCY!” 

But the best were a series: 

“ASK ROOT 

where he was on the evening of Sep- 
tember Third?” 

“ASK ROOT 

what business he had with the Old 
Man?” 

“ASK ROOT 

how much he got?” 

Having mailed the letter to Lipsky and sent off the 
copy to the printer, we turned in just at sun-up. 

We were awakened a few hours later by the arrival 
of a socialist committee. There was Dowd, a Scotch 
carpenter; Kaufmann, a brewery driver, and Lipsky, 
the candidate. He was a Russian Jew, and had been 


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a professor in the old country. He could speak very 
little English, but he had served a long term of exile 
in the Siberian prison mines. 

The socialists had no idea of winning the election. 
The campaign was for them only a demonstration, a 
couple of months when they had larger audiences at 
their soap-box meetings. They were suspicious of us. 

That consultation is one of the most ludicrous of my 
memories. Benson, sitting in an arm-chair, in blue 
silk pajamas, smoking cigarettes, outlined the plan in 
his fervent, profane, pyrotechnic way — much of which 
was beyond their comprehension. Kaufmann had to 
translate it into German for Lipsky. And when we 
talked German, Dowd could not understand. 

“But,” said Herr Lipsky, when the posters had been 
translated to him, “there is nothing there about our 
principles. There is no word about surplus value. It 
is not the red lantern we are fighting — but the Kapi- 
talismus.” 

“The people,” Benson raged — “the people with 
votes don’t know surplus value from the binominal 
theorem. Perhaps they will vote for their daughters — 
they can see them. But they won’t get excited about 
iheir great-great-grandchildren.” 

There was a squabble among the committee-men. 
The Scotchman was too canny to take sides; he wanted 
to refer the matter to the local, which was not to meet 
until two days before the election. 

“Aber,” said the brewery man, “Ve need etwas 
gongrete.” 

Lipsky accused him of being a “reformer.” 

After an hour’s wrangle, it was decided that they 
could not stop us from attacking Root. But we were 


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149 


to hold up the posters asking votes for Lipsky. He 
would not permit his name to be used without the con- 
sent of the local. 

As they were going downstairs, I heard Elaufmann 
protesting — “Aber, Genossen — ich bin eine echte re- 
voluzionaire!” 

So Benson ran the campaign unaided. The effect 
of his posters was electric. The next day he brought 
out some more: — 

“ASK THE OLD MAN.” 

Of course they both denied. But as the posters made 
no specific allegations, they did not know what to deny. 
Their output was conflicting. During the afternoon, 
Benson stirred things up again with a series — 

“IF ROOT WON’T TELL, ASK 'PIGGY’ BREEN.” 

Breen was rattled, and said it was all a lie, that the 
red light business had not been discussed at the meet- 
ing in Billy Bryan’s saloon. Both Root and the Old 
Man had denied the meeting. So Benson had them 
on the run. The more they explained the worse they 
tangled things. The cadet from whom I had forced 
our information, fearing the wrath of The Old Man, 
was of course keeping his mouth shut. We did not give 
away on him. So they could not guess Benson’s source 
of knowledge, and would have given anything to know 
just how much he knew. 

The Socialist local nearly broke up over the affair. 
A number were absolutely set against accepting aid 
from a “Bourgeois philanthropist,” like Benson. Lip- 
sky was in a violently embarrassing position. Sud- 
denly there was a good chance of his election. The 


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people of the district were manifestly excited over the 
issue. They were ready to vote for any one who would 
promise effective war against the cadets. It must have 
been a frightful temptation to him. But he stood fast 
for his principles. He did not want to be elected on 
a chance reform issue. If the people of the neighborhood 
stood for Marxian economics, he would be glad to rep- 
resent them. But he would have nothing to do with 
demagogy. 

On the other hand, a young Jewish lawyer named 
Klein was the Socialist candidate for alderman, and he 
saw a chance of being elected on the “Down with the red 
light” cry. He was ready to tear the hesitaters to 
pieces. He felt that the social revolution and univer- 
sal brotherhood only awaited his installation in office. 

At last it was agreed that a mass meeting should be 
called in the Palace Lyceum on Grand Street and that 
Klein and Benson should speak on the red light issue 
and Lipsky on economics. We brought out the “Vote 
the Socialist Ticket” poster. 

Benson was at the very top of the advertising pro- 
fession, and he certainly threw himself headlong into 
this job. 

“I’ve persuaded about fourteen million people to buy 
Prince of Wales Aristocratic Suspenders,” he said. 
“I don’t see why I can’t persuade a few thousand to 
vote right once in their lives.” 

He certainly did marvels at it. 

The night before election, the Palace Lyceum was 
packed to the roof. And this in spite of the organized 
efforts of the strong-arm men of the machine. But the 
meeting was a miserable fizzle. Benson was helpless 
between those two speakers. 


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151 


Klein’s discourse consisted in telling what he would 
do if elected — among other things, I recall, he was going 
to nationalize the railways and abolish war. 

Benson was not much of a public speaker. As far 
as I know, it was his one attempt. But his success at 
advertising was based on his knowledge of the people 
and how they thought. They were not interested in 
Klein or the nationalization of the railroads. The one 
thing which moved them was the sale of their daughters. 
Benson went right to the point, reminded them of it 
in a few words, and then told the story of Root’s treach- 
ery, piecing together our facts and guesses. “It is 
not legal evidence,” he said, “you can take it for what 
it is worth. It’s up to you — tomorrow at the voting 
booths.” 

“To hell with Root!” somebody yelled. 

“There’s only one candidate better than Root,” 
Benson shouted back, — “ Lipsky!” 

When they got through cheering, he gave them the 
words of a song he had written to “Marching through 
Georgia.” He had trained the Manner Chor of the 
Arbeiter Studenten Verein to sing it. It caught on 
like wildfire. I am sure that if the meeting had broken 
up then, and they could have marched out singing that 
song, Lipsky would have been elected overwhelmingly. 
But Lipsky spoke. 

“Der Socialismus ruht auf einer festen ekonomischen 
grundlage. . . .” 

For twenty minutes in deadly German sentences he 
lectured on the economic interpretation of history. 
Then for twenty minutes he analyzed capitalism. Then 
he drank a glass of water and took a fresh start. He 
referred to Klein’s speech and pointed out how the 


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election of one or a hundred officials could not bring 
about Socialism; the only hope lay in a patient, wide- 
spread, universal organization of the working class. 
Then in detail he discussed the difference between 
reform and revolution, how this red light business 
was only one by-product of the great injustice of ex- 
ploitation by surplus value. 

When he had been talking a little over an hour, he 
said “Lastly.” He began on a history of the Inter- 
national Socialist Party from its humble beginning in 
Marx’ Communist League to its present gigantic pro- 
portions. 

On and on he drawled. Many got up and left — ^he 
did not notice. Someone in the gallery yelled, 

“Cheese it! Cut it out! We want Benson!” 

He went right on through the tumult, and at last 
discouraged the disturbers. The recent International 
Socialist Congress had discussed the following nine 
problems: (1) The Agrarian Question, (2) The Rela- 
tion of the Political Party to Trade Unions. ... It 
was hopeless. The audience melted. And they did 
not sing as they left. 

At last he was through. I remember the sudden 
transformation. The set, dogged expression left his 
face, as he looked up from his notes. His back straight- 
ened, his eyes flashed — a light came to them which 
somehow explained how this dry-as-dust professor of 
economics had suddenly left his class-room and thrown 
his weak gauntlet at the Tsar of all the Russias. It 
was the hope which had sustained him all the weary 
years in Arctic Siberia. 

“Working-men of all lands — Unite!” he shouted it 
out to the almost empty house — his arms wide thrown 


A MAN’S WORLD 


153 


in his only gesture — “You have nothing to lose but your 
chains! You have a world to gain!” 

There was a brave attempt at a cheer from the few 
devoted Socialists who remained. The exultation left 
him as suddenly as it had come, and he sat down, a 
tired, worn old man. Klein rushed at him, with tears 
in his eyes. “You’ve spoiled it all!” he wailed. The 
old man straightened up once more. 

“I did my duty,” he said solemnly. 

When the returns came in the next night, the So- 
cialist vote had jumped from 250 to 1800. Root had 
only 1,000. O’Brien, the machine candidate, won with 
2,500. At the last moment, the Old Man, seeing that 
Root was hopelessly beaten, had gone back on his 
bargain and sent out word to elect O’Brien. 

“The funny thing about the Socialists is,” Benson 
said to me, “that they are dead right. Take Lipsky. 
He’s a dub of a politician, but pretty good as a philoso- 
pher. Wasn’t it old Mark Aurelius who wanted the 
world ruled by philosophers — not a bad idea — only it’s 
impracticable. They are right to suspect us reformers. 
Nine out of ten of the settlement bunch are just like 
Maynard — quitters when it comes to the issue. They’d 
like to uplift the working class, but they don’t want 
to be mistaken for them. And after all this red light 
business is only a symptom. You and I and Lipsky 
can afford to be philosophic about it — we haven’t any 
daughters. But the fathers who live in this dirty dis- 
trict — they ask for bread — not any philosopher’s stone. 
Any way, we fixed Root, and that is what we set out 
to do.” 

“It cost me a lot of money,” he said later. “And I 
did not want to go broke just now. There is a bunch of 


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swindlers out in Chicago with a fake shoe polish they 
want me to market. It will ruin a shoe in two months. 
They are offering me all kinds of money. * I hate to go 
to it — ^but I guess I’ll have to.” 

He sat down to his desk and began studying his bills 
and bank-book. 

“How would ‘shin-ide’ do for a bum shoe-polish?” 
he said, looking up suddenly. “‘Shin-ide. It puts 
halos on your shoes.’ ” 

Our sudden burst into politics, at least Benson’s — 
my small part in it was never known — attracted a good 
deal of newspaper notice. Certainly Root realized 
where his troubles started, and he went heartily about 
making us uncomfortable. 

A couple of mornings after election, the Rev. Mr. 
Dawn, the head-worker, came to our room, his hands 
full of newspapers and letters — the “corpus delicti.” 

I wish I could give more space to Dawn. He was a 
thoroughly good man. And although we judged him 
harshly at the time, I think an admirable man. At 
least, I feel that I ought to think so about him, but 
some of the old contempt still clings to his memory. 

His whole soul was wrapped up in the settlement 
movement. Socialism was repellent to him because it 
insisted on the existence of class lines. He had come to 
America from England because the class distinctions — 
so closely drawn there — were repugnant to him. He 
hoped in our young Republic to see a development in 
the opposite direction. His hope blinded him. 

And in spite of his loudly-professed Democracy, he 
was essentially aristocratic in his ideas of social service. 
The solution of our manifest ills he expected to find in 
the good intentions of the “better bred.” Their loving 


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155 


kindness was to bring cheer and comfort to the lowly. 
His faith in the settlement movement was real and 
great, which of course made him very conservative in 
the face of any issue which involved its good repute. 

“You people seem to have seriously offended Mr. 
Root,” he began. 

“You don’t say so!” Benson replied. He was 
shaving. 

Dawn could not understand Benson’s type of humor. 

“I am afraid you have,” he said. 

Benson cut himself. 

“I don’t remember having called him anything 
worse than a cadet,” he said sweetly. 

“Oh, I see you are joking.” 

“No. I did call him that.” 

“I’m sorry to hear you say it. Sorry to have you 
verify the report that you used intemperate language. 
I have never met Mr. Root. But he has many friends 
among. . . .” 

“The best people?” Benson interrupted. 

“I was about to say among our supporters. It is 
most regrettable that your ill-advised attack on him 
may alienate many of them. It seems also that you 
have dragged the name of the settlement into the mire 
of Socialism. I must confess that I hardly know — that, 
in fact, I am at a loss. . . .” 

“You needn’t worry about it. Whitman and I will 
leave. All you have to do is to roll your eyes if we are 
mentioned, and say — ‘Yes. It was most regrettable — 
but of course they left the settlement at once!’ Invite 
Root to dinner a couple of times. Walk up and down 
Stanton Street with him — arm in arm. It will blow 
over — it will square everything with ‘ the best people ’ ! ” 


156 


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“I am sorry to hear you speak so bitterly,” Dawn 
said, “But frankly, I think it wisest that you should 
sever your connection with us. When the welfare of 
the whole settlement movement is at stake, I cannot 
allow my personal feelings to blind my. . . .” 

“Oh, don’t apologize. There is no personal ill- 
feeling.” 

And so we left the settlement. 


BOOK V 
I 

Benson and I set up housekeeping in the top floor of 
an old mansion on Eldridge Street. Once upon a time 
it had boasted of a fine lawn before it, and of orchards 
and gardens on all sides. But it had been submerged 
in the slums. You stepped out of the front door onto 
the busy sidewalk, and dumb-bell tenements springing 
up close about it had robbed it of all its former glory. 
Two mansard bedrooms in the front we threw together, 
making a large study. We put in an open fire-place, 
built some settees into the walls and before the windows. 
There were bookcases all about, some great chairs and 
a round table for writing and for meals. Of the rooms 
in the back we arranged two for sleeping, turned one 
into a kitchen and a fomth into a commodious bath. 
With his usual love for the incongruous, Norman nick- 
named the establishment — “The Teepee.” 

In my work in the Tombs I had one time been able 
to clearly show the innocence of an old Garibaldian, who 
was charged with murder. He felt that he owed his 
life to me, and so became my devoted slave. His name 
was Guiseppe and he had fought for Liberty on two 
continents. It was hard to tell which was the more 
picturesque, his shaggy mane of white hair or his lan- 
guage — a goulash of words picked up in many lands. 
Within his disappointed, defeated body he still nursed 
the ardent flame of idealism. The spirit of Mazzini’s 
157 


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A MAN’S WORLD 


“Young Italy,” the dream of “The Universal Repub- 
lic” hved on in spite of all the disillusionment which 
old age in poverty and exile had brought him. 

In the Franco-Prussian War, while campaigning in 
The Vosges, he had cooked for the Great Liberator. 
We installed him in the kitchen of the Teepee. His 
especial pride was a pepper and garlic stew which 
Garibaldi had praised. This dish threatened to be the 
death of us. It was the trump he always led when in 
doubt. 

II 

During the years I was in the settlement, I received 
regularly two letters a month from Ann. They were 
never sentimental. They dealt with matters of fact. 
Norman’s uncle and aunt had interested themselves 
in her ambition and had allowed her much time to study. 
At first her work in Pasteur’s laboratory had consisted 
in cooking bouillon for the culture of bacteria. It did 
not seem very interesting to me, but it fascinated her. 
She even sent me the receipt and detailed instructions 
about using it. After awhile she had been promoted 
to a microscope and original research. She soon at- 
tracted Pasteur’s attention and he offered her a position 
as his personal assistant. Her employers were im- 
mensely proud of her success and, securing another 
nurse, released her. She was enthusiastic over this 
change. She could learn more, she wrote, watching the 
master than by any amount of original work. 

It was part of her character that her letters gave me 
no picture of Paris. She had no interest in inanimate 
things, no “geographical sense.” I knew the names 
and idiosyncracies of most of the laboratory assistants, 


A MAN’S WORLD 


159 


she gave me no idea of Les Invalides, near which she 
lived. There was much about the inner consciousness 
of a German girl with whom she roomed, but I did not 
know whether the laboratory was in a business or 
residential section of the city. She wrote once of a 
trip down the river to St. Cloud, and all she thought 
worth recording was the amusingly idiotic conversation 
of an American honeymoon couple, who sat in front of 
her, and did not suspect that she understood English. 

Although she wrote so much about people, the char- 
acters she described never seemed human to me. She 
did not understand the interpretive power of a back- 
ground. Her outlook was extremely individualistic. 
Auguste Compte wrote somewhere that there is much 
more of the dead past in us than of the present genera- 
tion. I would go further and say that there is much 
more of the present generation in us than there is of 
ourselves. If we stripped off the influence of our homes, 
of our friends, of the contempore books we read, of our 
thousand and one social obligations, there would be 
precious little left of us. Ann carried this stripping 
process so far that even Pasteur, for whom she had the 
warmest admiration, seemed to me a dead mechanism. 

She never referred to our personal relations, never 
spoke of returning to America. And I avoided these 
subjects in my answers. I was afraid of them. 

I thought about her frequently and almost always 
with passion. I dreamed about her. Fixed somewhere 
in my brain was a very definite feeling that such emo- 
tions ought not to exist apart from love. I was not in 
love with Ann. Her letters rarely interested me. It 
was a task to answer them. Our contacts with life 
were utterly different. 


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I kept to the “forms” of chastity. There are those 
who believe that there is some virtue in preserving 
forms. I have never felt so. It did not require much 
effort to keep to this manner of life. I was constantly 
observing prostitution from the view-point of the 
Tombs. And to anyone who saw these women, as I 
did, in their ultimate misery and degradation, they 
could excite nothing but pity. There is no part of the 
whole problem of crime so utterly nauseating. Although 
I held myself back from what is called “vice,” the state 
of my mind in those days was not pleasant, — and I 
think it was not healthy. It was no particular comfort 
for me to learn that other men, living, as I was, in out- 
ward purity, were also tormented by erotic dreams. 

Shortly after we moved into the Teepee a letter came 
from Ann which was bulkier than usual. The first 
pages were a statement of new plans. An American 
doctor, who had been working with Pasteur, was re- 
turning to establish a bacteriological laboratory in this 
country. He had offered her a good salary to come with 
him as his chief assistant. The laboratory was to be 
built in Cromley, a Jersey suburb, thirty minutes from 
the city. As soon as it was ready she was coming. 
It would be interesting, responsible work and she could 
make a home for her mother who was becoming infirm. 

The rest, pages and pages, was a love letter. Every 
night, these years of separation — so she wrote — ^had 
been filled with dreams of me. As always she put her 
work above her love. Bacteriology was the great fact 
of her fife. She held it a treason to reality when, as 
so often happens, people lose their sense of propor- 
tion and allow love to usiup the place of graver 
things. But now that her work brought her towards 


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her love, she looked forward to a fuller life — ^a life 
adorned. 

The letter brought a great unrest. Her passionate 
call to me certainly found an echo. I lost much sleep — 
tormented, intoxicated with the images her words called 
up. Years before an immense loneliness had pushed 
me into the comfort of her arms. This was no longer 
the case. My life was full, almost over-full of work and 
friends. But the pull towards her seemed even more 
irresistible now than before. 

Marriage seemed to me the only worthy solution. 
But even more clearly than in the hospital days I knew 
I did not want to marry her. It was, I suppose, above 
all because I did not love her. It was partly because I 
liked my bachelor freedom, the coming and going with- 
out reference to anyone. It was partly my deep attach- 
ment to Norman. I felt he would not care for Ann. 
Anyway it would break up our household in the Teepee. 

At last a letter came setting the date of her arrival. 
It coincided with a long-standing engagement I had 
made to lecture on criminology in a western college. 
I had an entirely cowardly sense of relief in the realiza- 
tion that the meeting and adjustment were postponed. 
But I thought of little else. Returning from my lec- 
tures, on the long ride across half the continent, with 
the knowledge that Ann was awaiting me in the city, 
that I could postpone things no longer, I won to a de- 
cision. I would see her at the earliest convenience — 
it seemed more straightforward to see her than to 
write — and tell her that I did not wish to recommence 
our intimacy. I might not be able to explain why I 
wanted to break with her, but I could at least make it 
plain that I did. 


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On my return, I found a letter waiting me in the 
Teepee. It contained her telephone number and a 
query as to when I could come out for dinner. I called 
her up at once. I would come that very day. The 
train out to Cromley seemed perversely slow. I was 
impatient to be through with it, to get back undis- 
turbed to my work. It was only a short walk from 
the station to her house. The row of gingerbread cot- 
tages along her street is one of the fixtures of my mem- 
ories. 

Ann opened the door for me. She held me out at 
arm’s length a minute. 

“Woof!” she said, “You’ve grown old.” Then she 
gave me a sudden kiss. “Come. You must meet 
Mother.” 

In the little parlor, Mrs. Barton greeted me cor- 
dially. She was a tall, angular New England woman, 
dried up in body, but her eyes were still young. I have 
seen many women like her down Cape Cod way. But 
her presence threw me into as much confusion as if 
she had been some threatening sort of an ogress. I 
could not fight out this matter with Ann before her 
mother. And some instinct warned me that I must 
plunge into my subject at once, if I wished to do it at 
all. 

“Dinner is ready,” Ann said in the midst of my em- 
barrassment. 

“This is my little grandson, William,” Mrs. Barton 
said of a tow-headed youngster, of three, who caught 
hold of her skirt. 

Ann picked him up. 

“Can’t you shake hands like a gentleman, Billy 
Boy?” she asked. “No? Well, you don’t have to.” 


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163 


She swung him into a high chair opposite mine. I 
have never been more embarrassed in my life. It was 
all so different from what I had foreseen. I suppose I 
had expected some heroics. It was entirely common- 
place. It was hard to keep in mind that a big moral 
issue was at stake. Mrs. Barton was evidently taking 
my measure. And “Billy Boy” glared at me across 
the table out of his big, inane, blue eyes. 

Ann did the talking, telling us of the wonders of 
her new laboratory and something of the personality 
of her chief. She looked younger than when she went 
away. She had filled out considerably and her face 
had lost the oldish, narrow look which I remembered. 
She had that smety of gesture and tone which comes 
only to those who have found the work they are fitted 
to. Above all she seemed happy, and contented and 
merry. Each glance I stole at her told me it would be 
harder than I had thought to keep my resolution. It 
was impossible to look at “Billy Boy,” he would have 
stared the Sphinx out of countenance. So I gave most 
of my attention to Mrs. Barton. 

When the dinner was over, we moved into the parlor 
for coffee. In a few minutes Mrs. Barton took the 
youngster to bed. The door had hardly closed behind 
them when Ann’s arms were about me. There was a 
broken flood of words. I do not remember what she 
said. But somehow it seemed as if I were saying it 
myself, so wonderfully her words expressed my own 
longings. A great happiness had fallen upon me. Per- 
haps this passion was not right, perhaps it was neither 
moral nor wise, but it was overwhelmingly a part of 
me. It would have been utter self-repudiation to deny 
it. 


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In the morning I again asked Ann to marry me. It 
was my last ditch. 

“Don’t,” she said, “dearest, don’t talk of marriage. 
Why? Why do you want to take our love into a court- 
house? Once for all — let’s fight this out and be finished 
with it.” 

It was all very clear to her. Promises of love were 
futile. She had loved once before, had thought it would 
last forever. She was glad there had been no promises. 

“I’m older now — not so likely to change — but why 
go to law about it? Why do you want to marry me? 
Isn’t it partly because some people — perhaps your own 
family — would be shocked at a free love union? Well, 
haven’t I a right to think of my people? My sister, 
who’s dead, Billy’s mother — she didn’t think it was 
necessary to have a wedding ring and all that. My peo- 
ple would be grieved if I got married. They’d think 
I’d conformed — gone back on my principles. It would 
break mother’s heart. It would seem like a repudiation 
of her way of living. And she’s the finest mother any- 
one ever had. Even if I didn’t believe in free love, I’d 
never get married on her account.” 

Despite what Ann told me I was decidedly embar- 
rassed to meet her mother at breakfast. But when we 
appeared, Mrs. Barton kissed me. Her hands on my 
shoulders, she searched my face with her eyes. 

“Ann loves you very much, my boy,” she said. “Be 
good to her.” 

The breakfast was a far pleasanter meal than the 
dinner had been. Even Billy Boy’s stare was not quite 
so hostile. 

Yet as I rode into town on the early train my scruples 
came hack. To be sure I had very little respect for the 


A MAN’S WORLD 


165 


“sanctity” of formal marriage. I had seen too much of 
it in the Tombs. Certainly no amount of legal or reli- 
gious ceremony is a guarantee of bUss or even of com- 
mon decency. The minor marriage failures are attended 
to in the civil divorce courts. The domestic difficulties 
which are threshed out in the criminal courts show very 
clearly that there is no magic in church ritual to trans- 
form a brute into a good husband. Ten wedding rings 
will not change an alcoholic woman into a good mother. 
And then I was always witnessing “forced” marriages. 
Such was the cheap and easy solution in cases of seduc- 
tion and rape in the second degree. Our law givers 
have decreed eighteen as the age of consent. The se- 
duction of a girl under that arbitrary age is rape. Most 
of our grandmothers were married earlier. But the law 
is too majestic a thing to consider such details. It 
deals with general principles. If it has been flouted, 
Justice must be done though the heavens fall. How- 
ever, it is an expensive matter to send a man to prison. 
So he is offered the alternative of marrying the girl. 
Justice gives no heed to the morality nor happiness of 
the two young people who have fallen in trouble, cares 
not at all for the next generation. Send the guilty 
couple to the altar. Their sins are forgiven them. The 
conventions have been vindicated. The juggernaut is 
appeased. No. I was very little impressed with the 
virtue of “legal” marriage. 

But I had a strong, if rather indefinite, ideal of a 
“true” marriage, a real mating, a close copartnership, 
a community of interest and a comradely growth, 
sanctified by a mutual passion. I saw no chance of 
this in my relation to Ann. 

At the Tombs that day, I tried, and to a large extent 


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succeeded, in forgetting the problem. But back in the 
Teepee, at dinner with Norman, it seized me again. 
Even Guiseppe noticed my preoccupation and walked 
about on tiptoe. 

“What’s eating you?” Norman asked as we drank 
our coffee. “Any way I can lend a hand? ” 

“A woman,” I said. 

“That lets me out.” And after a while he muttered 
“Hell.” 

“What do you think,” I asked — suddenly resolved 
to get an outside opinion — “about one’s right to be 
intimate with a woman, outside of marriage? ” 

“I don’t think about it at all,” he snapped. “Not 
nowadays. Time was when I didn’t think of much 
else. It didn’t do me any good. The times are rotten — 
out of joint. Everything we do is out of joint — in- 
evitably. Ninety per cent of us want to do what’s right 
and as it is ninety-nine per cent of us ball things up. I 
don’t think much of marriage. I tried it once — di- 
vorced.” 

This was news to me. 

“I don’t Uke to talk about it. No use now. It was 
a miserable affair. I tried to be decent — did all I knew 
how to make it right. But I guess the girl suffered more 
than I did — which is one of the reasons why I hate God. 
Some people tumble into happiness — but it seems luck 
to me — ^pure luck.” 

I cannot recall that evening’s talk in detail. Norman 
was unusually reticent. It was only by questions that 
I could draw him out. 

“ What do you think about free love? ” I asked. 

“It’s a contradiction in terms. There’s nothing free 
about love. It’s tying oneself up in the tightest kind 


A MAN’S WORLD 


167 


of a knot. A man will not only work his fingers off for 
the woman he loves — he’ll have his hair cut the way 
she likes. A person in love doesn’t want to be free. 
The hell of it is when the slavery continues after the 
love is dead. Don’t try to free love — what’s needed is 
the emancipation of the loveless.” 

We were silent for a while, very much distressed 
that we could find no solid anchorage. I was about to 
ask some other question when he broke out again on 
his own line of thought. 

“Abolishing marriage won’t do it. These Anarchists 
are naive. They want to make things simple — say free 
love would simplify the matter. But all progress — all 
evolution — is towards more complex forms. Our brains 
are better than monkey brains because they’re more 
complex. This “ simple life ” talk is rank reaction. I 
don’t want to see laws abolished, but brought up to 
date. Civilization means ever increasing complexity 
in the forms of life. And we try to govern it by Roman 
law, plus a hedge podge of mediaeval common law. Not 
less laws — but modern laws.” 

For a while his mind played about this idea, then he 
ended the discussion abruptly. 

“ Why put your problem up to me? As far as solving 
the man and woman question goes, my life has been a 
miserable failure. No matter what you do, whether 
you quit or go ahead — unless you’re lucky as hell — 
you’ll wish you were a eunuch before you’re through.” 

So I got little help from him in this matter. I never 
really settled it. More or less it settled itself. There 
were forces at work which were stronger than my 
scruples. Sometimes it seemed horribly wrong to me 
and I decided not to go back to Cromley. But as the 


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days passed I began to think more and more of Ann. 
Sooner or later I telephoned. I did not surrender with- 
out many struggles. But gradually she became an 
accepted fact in my life and with the years an in- 
creasingly valued fact. I am not proud of the moral 
indecisions, not at all proud of my contentment with 
what seemed less than perfect. But so it was. 

Nothing in my life has seemed to me of so uncertain 
ethical value. Of course it was a violation of our 
traditional morality, but there are very few who blindly 
accept the conventions as always binding. I cannot 
dismiss it offhand as simply right or wrong; my own 
judgment in the matter was swung back and forth with 
almost the regularity of a pendulum. 

At first it seemed to me unfair to take so much more 
than I could give. But after all I think little is gained 
by trying to treat love like merchandise, by trying to 
measure and weigh it. Certainly Ann would have been 
glad if I had loved her more wholly. But she regarded 
that as a work of fate, which no amount of wishing — by 
either of us — could change. She would have run away 
if our intimacy had begun to interfere with her work. 
She threw herself into her specialty with a whole- 
heartedness I have never seen equalled. Once I asked 
her if she had no desire for children. 

“Of course I have,” she said, “but sometimes I’ve 
wanted the moon to wear in my hair. I’d like to live 
till I could see the triumph of medicine. I’d like to be a 
pall-bearer at the funeral of the last malignant germ. 
I’d like a yacht. I never went sailing but once — ^and 
it was very wonderful. But I don’t want any of these 
things in the same way I want to work.” 

She was not entirely satisfied. Who is? She had 


A MAN’S WORLD 


169 


been taught contempt for the cheap respectability we 
could have secured for a small fee from a justice of the 
peace. I think she got as much happiness out of our 
relationship as most women do from their home lives. 
I cannot picture her as getting any added pleasure out of 
sewing buttons onto my clothes or darning my hose. 
No doubt there were lonely evenings when she wished 
the fates had given her a more ordinary life and a 
husband who came home regularly. Although she 
never complained, I knew that it hurt her if the rush 
of other — to me more important — affairs kept me in 
town when she was expecting me. But she would have 
been more unhappy if she had been in love with a man 
who interfered in the least in her freedom. It does not 
seem so imfair to me now as it did at first. We were 
neither of us getting all we could dream of. But no 
more was either of us ready to give up the half loaf. 

And “half loaf” seems a very inadequate term for my 
share. I find myseK trying to “argue” about this — I 
am rather vexed by things I cannot call either black 
or white. But so much of it was utterly unarguable. 
If we are, as some say, to judge life by the pleasure 
it brings us, Ann was beyond question the biggest and 
best thing in my life. I remember one Sunday in the 
late fall, we were afoot with the first streak of dawn; 
all day long we tramped through the Jersey mountains. 
The autumn coloring of the maple groves was un- 
utterably gorgeous. Just at sunset, all the western 
sky brilliant with red and a hundred shades of hot 
orange — even more brilliant than the frost nipped 
leaves had been— we reached a little railroad station 
and so came back to Cromley and the roaring wood fire 
and New England supper Mother Barton had prepared 


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for us. I would feel sorry for anyone to whom such 
a day would not seem glorious. But to me, living six 
long days a week in the seething slums, in the even 
gloomier shadow of the Tombs, such outings were a 
renewal of life, a rebirth. 

And besides the evident pleasure of these holidays, 
Ann brought me a feeling of mental and physical well- 
being and healthfulness I had never before known. 
My grip on life was surer, my vision clearer, my store 
of energy was better adjusted, more economically 
utilized, because of her. I believe that a man, who says 
he cannot live in celibacy, is lying. But with equal 
emphasis, I believe that the circumstances which make 
it wise for a man or woman to live out their lives alone 
are extremely rare. The hours I spent at Cromley 
were recreation in the deepest sense of the word. 

The rides into town on the early train stick in my 
mind as a memory apart from all the rest of my life. 
I seemed at those times to be in a higher mood than 
usual. Speeding into the city, to my grim task in the 
Tombs, from the sweet solace of her home, I found 
inspiration and hope for my daily grind. There was an 
entirely special sensation, experienced at no other 
time, when I found myself aboard the ferry, leaning 
over the fore-rail, watching the sky-scrapers struggle up 
through the morning mist. Perhaps all of us know some 
such exhilarating environment, which makes us exult 
in life and work and purpose. Standing forward on the 
upper deck, my lungs full of the sweet salt air of the 
harbor, some foolish association always recalls the lines 
from the speech of William Tell and makes me want to 
shout aloud — "Ye rocks and crags, I am with you 
once again.” 


A MAN’S WORLD 


171 


None of the obvious objections to such an irregular 
relationship seem to me to have much weight in the 
face of the very real good it brought me. And yet — I 
cannot accept it without qualifications any more than 
I can condemn it. I have come to feel that its unsat- 
isfactoriness was due to its fragmentary character. 
I cannot agree with Ann in her theory of keeping work 
and love apart. A man who divorces his religion from 
his business finds both of them suffer. I think the same 
rule holds for our problem. I did not enter in any 
way into Ann’s work, nor she into mine. She gave me 
nev/ energy for it, rested me from its weariness, but 
never was a part of it. 

I think the fact that I can, in writing of my life, 
make one section deal with her and another with my 
work and very seldom mention both in the same para- 
graph, is the severest criticism which can be brought 
against our relationship. 


Ill 

Benson persuaded an editorial friend to publish as 
articles some of the lectures on criminology which I 
had delivered out west. A supreme court justice at- 
tempted to answer my criticisms of the judicial system 
and carelessly denied some patent facts. The news- 
papers made a nine days sensation out of our con- 
troversy. One effect of the discussion was to awaken 
the Prisoner’s Aid Society to a realization that some- 
thing ought to be done. In order to relieve themselves 
of this responsibility they proposed to employ me as 
their secretary in the place of an elderly gentleman 
who had held that position gratuitously — and sleep- 
ily — for twenty odd years. The offer did not, at first, 


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A MAN’S WORLD 


attract me. My work in the Tombs held all my in- 
terest. Until Baldwin came along, I did not see any 
chance of real service with the society. 

He was assistant superintendent of the state in- 
dustrial school — ^a sort of intermediary prison for those 
offenders who were too young for state prisons and too 
old for the house of refuge. He had started out as a 
“screw” in Sing Sing, had been transferred to the state 
hospital for insane criminals and from there to the 
industrial school, where he had worked his way up 
to the position he then held. He really seemed to 
like the details of institutional management; he knew 
convicts and he was filled with a great enthusiasm over 
the possibility of reforming youthful offenders. 

He saw my name in the papers, as one interested in 
criminology and he wrote to me about this enthusiasm 
of his. After several letters had been exchanged he 
came to the city so we might talk it over. We put him 
up at the Teepee. He was getting close to forty-five, but 
was the youngest man of that age I have ever known. 
Benson and I went over his project in detail. For 
three solid days we talked of nothing else. Although 
my work dealt chiefly with accused persons who were 
waiting trial, still I was always being brought face to 
face with the horrors of our convict prisons. The 
unspeakable stupidity of treating young boys as we 
mistreat old offenders has always seemed to me the 
crowning outrage of our civilization. 

It is hard to realize today how revolutionary 
Baldwin’s scheme for a reformatory then sounded. 
Only the most feeble and timid experiments in such 
matters had been tried. We were still in those dark ages, 
when orphan and destitute children were sent to jail. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


173 


The weak point in his proposal — ^as is the case with 
almost every reform — ^was the expense. The state paid 
about ten cents a day for the maintenance of its con- 
victs, the per capita for the reformatory would be three 
or four times as much. Baldwin had foreseen this 
criticism and had collected endless figures to prove that 
it was only an apparent extravagance. One of the big- 
gest elements in the cost of crime is the expense of 
“ habitual offenders.” Baldwin had the life-story of one 
man who was serving his twelfth term in state prison 
and he had figured out just how much this man’s 
various crimes and arrests and trials and imprison- 
ments had cost the community and how much cheaper 
it would have been to have spent enough to reform him 
while he was young. It was an impressive document. 
By a number of such tables he made a conclusive case. 
The greater expense of the reformatory, would be a 
real economy if he could save one third of the boys. 
He believed that two-thirds could be reformed. With 
the help of a constitutional lawyer he had crystallized 
his ideas into a bill, which he hoped to have introduced 
into the legislature. 

As I have said, Norman and I gave three days close 
attention to the project. Baldwin had had much 
practical experience in such matters and had prepared 
his case admirably. The scheme looked feasible to 
us — as indeed it has since proved. We were all un- 
sophisticated enough to believe that a good plan once 
explained to the people would be immediately ac- 
cepted. 

I went before the executive committee of the Prison- 
er’s Aid Society and offered to accept the secretary- 
ship, if they would pledge their support to Baldwin’s 


174 


A MAN’S WORLD 


bill. They could find no precedent for such a measure 
in their books on European penology and I doubt if I 
could have swung them into line single-handed. But 
Benson was one of their board of directors and they 
relied on him to meet their annual deficit. He was 
able to bring more potent arguments to bear than I. 

By this time I had become a sort of established in- 
stitution in the Tombs. With the exception of O’Neil, 
I had won the confidence of the judges. They were, 
within certain limits, well-intentioned men and they 
did not like to condemn young boys to the contagion 
of state prison any more than you or I would. I got 
their signatures to a letter endorsing the reformatory 
idea, and through them arranged with the district 
attorney for such leaves of absence as I would need. 

I find myself with very little enthusiasm for chron- 
icling this campaign for a reformatory. It was so 
dolefully disheartening, so endlessly irritating — it 
dragged on so much longer than we had foreseen. But 
it is important not only to my own story, it influenced 
not only my way of thinking; it has also a broader and 
more compelling significance. There was hardly one 
of my friends, the people of my generation who were 
trying to make this world a more livable place, who were 
not at one time or another involved in a similar fight. 
One thing we all had experienced in common — the 
journey up to Albany to try and cajole our legislators 
into doing something, the value and wisdom of which 
no sane man could doubt. A new Acts of the Apostles 
might be written about the endless succession of dele- 
gations which gathered in the Grand Central Station, 
en route for the capital, fired with enthusiasm for 
some reform — a new tenement house law, some decent 


A MAN’S WORLD 


175 


regulation of child labor, some protection against the 
crying evils of the fraudulent immigrant banks or the 
vicious employment agencies and so forth. It would 
take a fat book to even list all the good causes which 
have inspired such pilgrimages. And the ardor with 
which the delegations set out for Albany was only 
equalled by the black discouragement which, a few 
days later, they brought back. 

After some trouble we found an assembly man who 
consented to introduce our bill. It was pigeon-holed 
at once. Then we went in for publicity. I wrote ar- 
ticles in magazines and newspapers. Benson and Bald- 
win got out and widely circulated a pamphlet. They 
were a strong combination, with the former’s knowledge 
of advertising and the latter’s familiarity with the sub- 
ject. I took the stump. 

Everyone, I suppose, who has done similar work, 
has made the same discovery. You cannot win your 
point with the ordinary audience by an appeal to reason. 
At first I treated my subject seriously — with dismal 
effect. But Norman came to one of my New York city 
meetings and cursed me roundly for a fool when it was 
over. I took his advice and went up and down and 
across the state telling “heart-interest” stories; yarns 
about the white haired mother whose only son was sent 
to Sing Sing for some trifling offense and was utterly 
corrupted by evil associates; about the orphan boy who 
stole a loaf of bread for his starving sister. How I came 
to hate those two! Once in my dreams I murdered 
that “white haired mother” with fierce glee. But I 
could always rely on them to start tears. If I tried to 
give my audiences our constructive ideal, what we 
meant by the word “reformatory,” I lost my grip on 


176 


A MAN’S WORLD 


them. They demanded thrills. Well — I gave them 
thrills. It was the only way, but it made me feel like a 
mountebank, like a charlatan selling blue pills. 

By the end of the year we had worked up enough 
popular interest to force a discussion of the bill on the 
floor of the legislature. On the first reading it was re- 
ferred to the Senate Committee on State Prisons. After 
several weeks of suspense the committee announced 
a date for a public hearing. I remember that at the 
time we thought this meant victory. At last we were 
to have an opportunity to present our case in a serious 
manner to serious men. Baldwin and Benson and I put 
in the preceding week preparing our briefs. On the day 
set for the hearing we marshalled our forces in the 
lobby of an Albany hotel. There was Allen, the presi- 
dent of the Prisoner’s Aid Society; Van Kirk, a vice- 
president of the State Bar Association and the three of 
us. It was arranged that Baldwin and I should speak 
first, he was to deal with the financial side of the pro- 
ject and I with its broader human phases. Allen and 
Van Kirk were to add the endorsements of the organi- 
zations they represented. I recall how perfect our case 
looked to us, how utterly impossible it seemed to fail 
of convincing the committee. 

The room in the old state house, where the hearing 
was held was a dingy place. There was the air of a court 
about it and the attendants. What seemed vitally 
important to us was dismal routine to them. When we 
arrived the committee was listening to a deputation 
of screws from Sing Sing who were asking for a revision 
of the rules in regard to vacations. The sight of the 
three committee men cooled my ardor. The chairman. 
Burton, was an upstate lawyer, who affected the ap- 


A MAN’S WORLD 


177 


pearance of a farmer to please his constituents. The 
other two, Clark and Reedy, were New Yorkers, one 
a Republican the other a Democrat, both fat and 
sleepy. At last the screws finished their plea. Burton 
rapped with his gavel. 

“What is the next business?” he asked wearily. 

“Hearing in the matter of a bill to establish a re- 
formatory for juvenile offenders,” the clerk drawled. 

“Does the Commissioner of State Prisons endorse 
this bill?” Clark asked. 

“No” — the Commissioner was on his feet at once. 
The charter of the Prisoner’s Aid Society gave it 
authority to inspect the penal institutions of the state, 
to audit their accounts and so forth. It was a thorn 
in the flesh of all commissioners and they could al- 
ways be counted on to oppose any suggestion of the 
society’s. 

“Well. What’s the use of going into the matter, 
then?” Reedy asked. “It’s not our custom to throw 
down the Commissioner.” 

“As it’s on the calendar we’ll have to listen to it,” 
Burton ruled. 

“How did it get on the calendar?” Clark growled. 

“I was under the impression the Commissioner was 
in accord, ” the clerk apologized. 

“Well, I want to know where you got that im- 
pression,” Clark insisted with ill temper. 

“Not from me,” the Commissioner spoke up. 

Burton rapped with his gavel. 

“Order, gentlemen,” he said. “We are wasting 
time. We will hear anyone who wishes to speak in 
favor of the bill.” 

Baldwin stood up and opened his notes. 


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A MAN’S WORLD 


“I have an important business matter I would like 
to attend to,” Reedy said. “May I be excused?” 

“Hold on,” Clark protested, “It’s my turn to get off 
early,” 

“I can’t excuse both of you,” Burton snapped. 
“This is the last business on the calendar. It will not 
detain us long. Proceed. What’s your name? Bald- 
win? Proceed.” 

The two other senators scowled sullenly like children 
who were being kept in after school. Suddenly Reedy 
began to grin. He leaned back in his chair, so that 
he could attract Clark’s attention behind the shoulders 
of the chairman who was writing a letter. He held out 
a coin. “Odd or even?” he whispered. It took Clark 
a moment to understand, then his scowl relaxed. 
“Even” he whispered back. Reedy looked at the coin 
and his face clouded up. 

“I have no objection to excusing Senator Clark,” 
he said, interrupting Baldwin in the midst of a sentence. 

Burton looked up from his letter in surprise. Clark 
chuckled audibly as he left the room. Reedy slouched 
sullenly in his chair. ‘ ‘ Proceed,” Burton said and turned 
back to his letter. Baldwin did admirably in the face 
of his levity, but no one was listening. Just as he was 
on the point of closing, Burton interrupted him again. 

“You have had fifteen minutes. I will give the 
other side ten and adjourn.” 

Van Kirk tried to argue with him, but Burton ig- 
nored his existence. “Mr. Commissioner,” he said, 
and turned once more to his letter. It was a relief 
to me that he cut me off. I was too furious to have 
spoken coherently. The Commissioner, sure of success, 
took the matter flippantly. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


179 


“Mr. Chairman, Senators. The Department of 
State Prisons is opposed to this bill on the ground that 
it is a visionary piece of nonsense. The whole talk 
of a reformatory was started by this Mr. Baldwin, 
an employee of my department, who is discontented 
because we have not sufficiently recognized his abilities. 
I understand that he wishes to be made superintendent 
of the State Industrial School, in which institution 
he is now employed in a subordinate position. He has 
secured the support of the undoubtedly sincere, but 
visionary theorists of the Prisoner’s Aid Society. As 
far as I know there are no other advocates of this bill. 
I could not recommend so large an appropriation of 
the people’s money to satisfy the ambition of Mr. 
Baldwin — nor to please the gentlemen of the Prison- 
er’s Aid Society!” 

He had hardly regained his seat when Burton’s gavel 
fell. 

“Adjourned.” 

Baldwin was one of the steadfast kind who do not 
know the meaning of discouragement. And Benson 
was so angry that he threw himself into the fight with 
redoubled ardor. Between them they carried me along. 

We started again at the bottom — trying to make 
an effective demand reach the legislators from the 
voters. I went again through the state, but stayed 
longer in each place, until I had formed a permanent 
committee. That year’s work persuaded me that I 
could have earned my living as a book-agent or by 
buncoing farmers into buying lightning rods. 

I remember especially New Lemberg, a sleepy town 
on one of the smaller lakes. I was the guest of the 
Episcopalian clergyman and stayed at the rectory. It 


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took me three days to land him, and he gave in at last 
from sheer boredom. He had been willing enough to 
let me come and speak to his congregation after morn- 
ing prayer, and he had called a conference of the 
ministers and leading citizens in his parlor on Sunday 
afternoon. But when I asked him to act as chairman 
of the county committee he held back. His life was 
full to overflowing already with his parish work, he 
was fond of the open country and of books. His hobby 
was translating Horace. I was asking him to give up 
some of this recreation for a cause which had never 
come close to him. I was sorry for him, but I needed 
him to give “tone,” the fashionable stamp, to the com- 
mittee. On Monday afternoon — I had been harassing 
him all morning, he proposed to teach me golf. A gen- 
eral discussion of literature carried us as far as the third 
hole and he had been happy. But as he was teeing for 
the next drive, I began on him again. He pulled his 
stroke horribly, and sat down in a pet. I remember 
those links as the most beautiful spot in all the state. 
There was softly rolling farm lands, woods and fields 
in a rich brocade of brown and green, and below us the 
lake. Here and there a fitful breeze turned its surface 
a darker blue. 

“I’m so busy as it is,” the rector pleaded, “I can’t 
take on this. Really — you know all my time is taken 
up already. I don’t get out like this more than once a 
w^eek. You must — ^really it’s asking too much of me — 
I’m getting old.” 

It was his last spurt of resistance. I hung on des- 
perately and in a few minutes he gave in. He was a 
valuable acquisition, no one worked on any of our 
committees harder than he. But somehow I was 


A MAN’S WORLD 


181 


ashamed of my conquest. I am sure he shudders when- 
ever he thinks of me. If he should meet me on the 
street even now, I would expect him to run away. 

After a solid year of this work — I groan still when 
I think of it — ^we had committees in almost every as- 
sembly district. They called on the various candidates 
and secured their promises to support the bill. We 
circulated immense petitions and sent formidable lists 
of signatmes to the successful candidates. We had 
also stirred the women’s clubs to action. The news- 
papers made considerable comment on the “Petition 
of the Hundred Thousand Mothers.” When the new 
legislature convened, we had the signatures of over 
two-thirds of the assemblymen, and a good majority 
of the senators to pledges to vote for the reformatory. 

Instead they gave their attention to the routine 
jobbery of their trade and just before they adjovirned 
they elected a joint commission, three members from 
each house, to consider the matter. 

I am quite sure, and having travelled so much through 
the state, I was in a position to know, that if we could 
have had a referendum, eighty per cent of the votes 
would have been for our bill. Fifteen of the twenty 
per cent of hostile votes would have come from the most 
ignorant and debased districts of the big cities. I 
doubt if a measure has ever gone before the state legis- 
lature with the more certain sanction of the electorate. 
Democracy is a very fine Fourth of July sentiment. 
But in those days it had nothing to do with “practical 
politics.” 

The new commission did not begin work for six 
months. As the members received ten dollars a day 
for each session, they sat for an horn or two a day for 


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several weeks. But at last we had our chance to 
present our case in a thorough and serious manner. 
The opposition to the bill was based on the testimony 
of half a dozen wardens who had been ordered to the 
stand by the Department of State Prisons. They had 
nothing to offer but prejudice and ignorance. Van 
Kirk, his fighting spirit stirred by the snub he had re- 
ceived from the senate committee, acted as our attor- 
ney and did it ably. Benson took hold of the press 
campaign and the newspapers were full of favorable 
comments. I am sure that when they adjourned after 
hearing our arguments, every commissioner was con- 
vinced of the wisdom of our project. 

But our opponents were better politicians than we. 
We let our case rest on the evidence. Just what wires 
the Department of State Prisons pulled during the recess, 
I do not know. But when the commission reconvened, 
a sub-committee introduced a substitute bill, which 
was accepted without discussion and unanimously 
recommended to the legislature. It was a travesty 
on Baldwin’s scheme. The age-limit was raised to 
admit men of thirty. Instead of being for first offenders, 
the new bill read for persons “convicted for the first 
time of a felony” — ^which opened the door to a large 
class who have become almost hopelessly hardened by 
a life of petty crime. Ordinary cellular confinement was 
substituted for the original plan of cottages. It was 
not at all what we had been fighting for. 

As soon as I read the new bill, I went before the 
Prisoner’s Aid Society and begged them to repudiate it, 
to stand for the original project or nothing. But in 
the first place they were not sufficiently informed in 
the matter to recognize the difference between the two 


A MAN’S WORLD 


183 


bills and in the second place the four years of unwonted 
activity had overstrained them. They wanted to rest. 
Ever since they have boasted of their enterprise in 
getting this mutilated reformatory established. 

I would have given it up in disgust except for personal 
loyalty for Baldwin. He felt that the reformatory, 
even in its emasculated condition, was an opening wedge 
and that as superintendent he might gradually be able 
to persuade the legislature to amend the charter back 
to his original design. Certainly he deserved the posi- 
tion, the institution would not have been established 
at all except for his persistent efforts. Norman and I 
went into the fight again to bring pressure to bear on 
the governor to appoint Baldwin. We got no help 
from the Prisoner’s Aid Society; it had fallen hope- 
lessly asleep. A few of our county committees came to 
life again and circulated petitions. My rector at New 
Lemberg was the most active. I think he was afraid 
I would visit him again. But the public was tired of 
the issue. The governor appointed a political friend. 

I resigned from the Prisoner’s Aid Society and went 
back to my work in the Tombs. I felt that I had wasted 
four years. 


IV 

Early in this campaign for the reformatory our 
peaceful life in the Teepee was shaken up by the advent 
of Nina. 

Norman and I were coming home from the Annual 
Ball of The Arbeiter Studenten Verein. It was near one 
o’clock Sunday morning as we turned into the Bowery. 
At the corner of Stanton Street a girl flagged us. 

“Hello, boys. Ain’t you lonesome? ” 


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An arc-light sputtered and fumed overhead. I will 
never forget its harsh glare on her face. It was a north 
Italian face, wonderfully Uke a Bellini Madonna. But 
on it was painted a ghastly leer. Above all she looked 
too young. 

“Aren’t you afraid the Gerry Society will get you?” 
Norman asked good naturedly. 

There was elemental tragedy in the foul words with 
which she answered him. But with a sudden change of 
mood — as unexpected as her appearance, as bewildering 
as her blasphemy — ^she threw her arms about his neck 
and kissed him. 

The look of horror on Norman’s face changed slowly 
to another expression. It was not wholly incompre- 
hensible. There was something exotic — something 
tantalizing to over-civilized nerves — in her youthful 
viciousness. Baudelaire would have found her a “fleur 
de mal.” He would have written immortal verses to 
her. Norman was stern with himself in such matters. 
He had steeled himself against the usual appeals of 
vice. It was the novelty of the attack that got through 
his armor. He pulled her hands apart, pushed her away 
from him and looked at her, his face drawn and rigid. 
A south-bound elevated roared past us overhead. With 
a sharp intake of breath he turned to me. 

“I’ve half a mind to take her home.” 

“It would be a great treat for her,” I ‘said, “com- 
pared to how she’ll spend the night if you don’t. I 
suppose it’s you or a drunken sailor.” 

“Will you come home with me?” he asked with 
sudden resolution. 

“Sure. You don’t look like a cheap-skate.” 

So we started on along the Bowery, arm-in-arm. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


186 


At first we were all silent. But intent on the business 
of amusing her clients, she suddenly jerked her feet off 
the ground, and hanging to our elbows, swung her 
soiled little red slippers in the air before us. 

“Gee!” she said, when we had recovered our balance, 
“You’re solemn guys.” 

“You’re in line with the best traditions of philosophy, 
kid,” Norman admitted. “There’s no virtue in sinning 
sadly. We might as well laugh.” 

The rest of our progress home was a noisy scramble. 
A hideous nightmare to me — out of the vague impres- 
sions of which, I remember most clearly the complaisant 
grin of the policeman on the beat; who twirled his stick 
as we passed. 

Guiseppe was dumb-founded at the addition to our 
number. Norman told him curtly to set a third cover 
for our supper. 

Once seated at the table Nina — that we discovered 
was her name — did not let anything interfere with the 
business in hand. Norman ate little. I had no appe- 
tite. So she did duty for all of us. Norman made a 
few remarks about the ball, but always he was watching 
her. I was unresponsive and conversation died. 

When Nina had made way with the last edible thing, 
the flood gates opened and she began to talk and play. 
She had an immense animal vivacity, which kept not 
only her tongue, but her whole body in action. She 
was full of a spirit of fun entirely foreign to both of us. 
We were rather serious minded, sombre men. Her love 
of horseplay was a novelty. 

It is hard to characterize her talk. Much of it was 
utterly imprintable. There were words, words — ^words! 
But somehow she seemed innocent of it all, wholly 


186 


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ignorant of any better manner of conversation, any 
better form of life. She grew immensely in my regard 
during those few minutes. I have seldom listened to 
more depraved language and yet a sort of intrinsic 
virtue — the light of unsulliable youth — shone through. 

I left them as soon as might be and went to my room. 
I passed Guiseppe in the hall, he was muttering to him- 
self strange oaths: “Dios” — “Corpo de Bacco” — “Sa- 
pristi” — “Nom de nom” I silently echoed his multi- 
lingual profanity. My passions had not been stirred 
and, looking at it in cold blood, I could only disapprove. 
Norman followed me to my room. Conversation did 
not start easily. But when at last I took my pipe out 
of my mouth, he cut me off. 

“Oh, don’t say it. What’s the use? I’m saying it 
myself. I wish I had long ears to wave, so I could bray. 
There’s only one thing to discuss. These diggings are 
as much yours as mine. I’ll take her to a hotel, if you 
prefer.” 

“Here or elsewhere. What difference does the place 
make?” I growled. “I haven’t any geographical in- 
terest in the case.” 

He thrust his hands deep in his pockets, paced up 
and down a minute, then turned with an abrupt “good- 
night” and went out. It was a troubled night for me. 
The brutal strength of the sex-pull had never seemed 
so malignant before. That I had begun to see something 
lovable in Nina, only made it worse. 

I got up early and although it was Sunday and I 
had no work at court, I breakfasted in haste, hoping 
to get out before they appeared. But Norman caught 
me just as I was leaving. 

“Come here,” he said, with his fingers on his lips. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


187 


He led me on tiptoe down the hall. Through his 
open door I could see her sleeping. The coil of her 
black hair and one white arm showed above the sheet. 
There was an ugly, half-healed bruise near the elbow. 
The painted leer had been washed from her face. A 
smile came and went — flickered — on her lips, a wonder- 
ful smile of peaceful happiness. 

“Am I clean crazy?” Norman whispered fiercely, 
“or is she beautiful?” 

We tiptoed back to the library. 

“Can you keep an eye on her for a while?” he said. 
“I had to have Guiseppe throw away her clothes — 
they were too dirty. I must get her some new ones. 
It won’t take me long.” 

But he stopped at the door and came back. 

“It’s the way she smiles in her sleep, Arnold, that 
gets me.” He hesitated a moment, trying to find words 
to fit his thought. He, who was usually so glib, had to 
search now. “You know, they say dreams are just a 
re-hash of waking experience. But — well — it isn’t the 
kind of smile you’d expect from her. God! I’d like 
to know what she dreams about ! It almost makes me 
feel religious. Reminds me of ‘Intimations of Im- 
mortality!’” 

Then he gave up trying to say it and rushed out to 
buy the clothes. I laid out my note-books and tried to 
work. Half an hour later she appeared in the doorway, 
sleepy-eyed, arrayed in a suit of Norman’s pajamas. 

“Where’s he gone?” she yawned. 

“He had to go out for a few minutes.” — I did not 
tell her why, as I thought he might enjoy surprising her 
with the new outfit. ‘ ‘ He’ll be back pretty soon. If you 
ring the bell, Guiseppe will bring you some breakfast.” 


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“Where’s the bell?” she asked, looking on the 
table. 

“ It’s on the wall. Press the button.” 

“Oh, it’s a door be-e-e-1-1.” It ended in a yawn. 

“If you wash your face, you may wake up enough to 
be hungry.” 

“Aw! Go to hell.” 

She thumbed her nose at me and departed. She had 
evidently entirely forgotten the dream which had 
brought the smile to her lips and troubled Norman. 
When Guiseppe brought in her breakfast, she came 
back and sat down. She had no greeting for me and I, 
thinking of nothing worth saying, went on with my 
writing. When there was nothing more to eat she 
began to talk with Guiseppe in rapid Italian. After a 
while he turned to me. 

“It’s very sad, Mr. Arnold. She comes from the 
same district in Lombardy where I was born.” 

My nerves were on edge. I grunted that I did not 
see how that made it any sadder. He was surprised at 
my tone, and was, I think, on the point of reminding 
me that it was also in the same district that the Great 
Liberator had been born. But he thought better of it 
and went off to the kitchen in a huff. 

Nina wandered about the room, examining the bric-a- 
brac with what seemed to me a stupid interest. Her 
inspection finished, she helped herself to a cigarette 
and sat down cross-legged on the divan. Out of the 
comer of my eye, I could see that she was minutely 
studying her pajamas. She would gently stroke the 
soft fabric, where it was drawn tight across the knee. 
The tassels on the belt string held her attention for 
several minutes. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


189 


“Say,” she broke out suddenly. “The old man says 
he biimed up my clothes. Is it a lie? ” 

“No. They are burnt. Your friend thought they 
were too dirty to wear.” 

“What sort of a game is this?” she demanded, after 
blowing out a cloud of smoke. ‘ ‘ This here suit of clothes 
is all right — ^it’s real silk, I guess. But — say — I don’t 
like parlor clothes. See? I won’t stand for. . . 

I interrupted her, -seeing at once what was in her 
mind. “Parlor clothes” are an old device — ^it was 
doubtless invented by some pander of ancient Nineveh. 
The proprietors of “disorderly houses” often keep their 
girls in bondage by withholding all decent clothes. 
The “parlor” costume, is one in which no woman 
would dare to go on the street. They are more effect- 
ive means of guarding slaves than chains. I tried 
to reassure Nina, telling her why Norman had gone 
out. 

“Honest?” she asked. “He’ll let me go? I’d raise 
hell — sooner than be in a house. It’s the sidewalk for 
mine — every time. He’d better not try any fancy 
games on me. I sure would raise hell!” 

“You wait and see,” I said. “He’s on the square.” 

I began writing again, she lit another cigarette and 
smoked awhile in silence. But presently she came over 
and sat on the table. 

“Say. He’ll give me some money, besides the 
clothes, won’t he?” 

“You’ll have to arrange that with him.” 

“I’ve got to have two dollars, by ten o’clock.” 

“Wouldn’t you rather have some good clothes than 
two dollars?” 

“No. Real money.” 


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I leaned back in my chair and looked her over. At 
last I ventured what was in my mind. 

“I suppose women’s clothes wouldn’t suit your man. 
But wouldn’t some red neckties please him as well as 
money?” 

“Say” — ^her eyes narrowed threateningly — “You’re 
a wise guy, ain’t you? Think you know it all?” 

“Well,” I said, “I know some.” 

I turned back the flap of my coat and showed her the 
badge of a county detective. She whistled with sur- 
prise, but did not seem dismayed. In fact she became 
suddenly friendly. Everything about her recent ex- 
periences, the bath, Norman’s attitude towards her, 
the meals, the rooms, had been strange and confusing. 
But a policeman! That came within the circle of 
things famiUar. She knew dozens of them. 

“Gee! I never would have thought you was a cop. 
Plain clothes man?” 

I nodded assent and then asked her. 

“Who are you hustling for?” 

For a moment she seemed to consider the advisa- 
bility of answering. But what was the use of trying 
to hide things from a “cop”? What I did not know, I 
could easily find out. Her cadet’s nom-de-guerre was 
“Blackie.” She spoke of him without enthusiasm, 
without marked revulsion — much as we speak of the 
unavoidable discomforts of life, such as the bad air 
in the subway, or the tipping system. With a few 
questions, I got her story — quite a different one from 
what she had told Norman. 

Ever since they had come to America, her mother 
had been scraping out a bare living for herself and her 
daughter by means of a small fruit business, and by 


A MAN’S WORLD 


191 


letting rooms behind the store to boarders. One of 
these men had seduced Nina under promise of taking 
her to the marionette show. This had happened — “ Oh, 
a very long time ago” — ^at too remote a date to be 
definitely remembered. She spoke of this man with 
foul-worded bitterness. It was not on account of the 
evil he had done her, but because he had not taken her 
to the show. “Men always cheat us,” she said. “It 
don’t matter how foxy you are, they beat you to it.” 
She had not burdened her memory with any precise 
record of her childish amours. They had been without 
pleasure — ^for an ice-cream cone, a few pennies, a chance 
to go to a show. She was a devotee of Bowery drama. 
“From Rags to Riches” was her favorite. “That,” 
she said, “was something grand!” 

The first person who had come anywhere near making 
love to her was this cadet “Blackie.” She had left her 
mother, without any regret, to live with him. That also 
had been “something grand” — ^at first. As near as 
she could remember, it was about a month before he 
drove her out on the street to “hustle” for him. Was 
he good to her, I asked. She shrugged her shoulders. 
Was he not a man? Then she showed her first en- 
thusiasm. He had a great “pull,” he was a friend of the 
‘ ‘ Old Man on Fourteenth Street. ’ ’ She gave ‘ ‘ Blackie ’ ’ 
this sincere tribute, the cops never troubled her. But 
he did have a temper. “It sure is hell, when he’s mad.” 
She rolled up the sleeve of her pajamas and showed me 
the bruise on her arm. It had been a kick. What for? 
She had forgotten. 

Then Benson came in, his arms full of bundles. I 
don’t suppose he had spent more than fifteen dollars — 
things are cheap in that neighborhood. But it was an 


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imposing assortment. I could not have bought so com- 
plete a trousseau without minute written instructions. 

Nina forgot her troubles in an instant, they never 
troubled her long. She pulled the bundles to pieces 
and scattered the garments everywhere. Guiseppe 
came in on some errand, but one glimpse of those 
feminine frivolities, strewn about our formerly sedate 
bachelor chairs finished him. With a wild Garibaldian 
oath, he rushed back to his kitchen. 

It was not in Nina’s nature to allow anything to 
intervene between her and her immediate desire. The 
things once seen, had to be tried on. 

“Come, come,” Norman protested. “You’d bet- 
ter do your dressing in the other room.” 

Nina seemed surprised at his scruples, but, gather- 
ing up the garments, followed him docilely down the 
hall. Shrieks of glee came through the open door, beat 
against my ears — distressingly. I seemed to hear the 
bones of some ghastly danse maccabre, rattling behind 
her mirth. But as if to drive away my gloom, she soon 
dashed into the room, fully booted and spurred. She 
was very pretty. And how she laughed! She seemed a 
sort of care-free and very young bacchante — the 
daughter of some goddess of gayety. She jumped 
on the table and, imitating a music hall artiste, danced 
a mild mixture of fandango and cancan. And as she 
danced, she sang — a ribald, barroom song. But the 
words meant nothing to her, she was just seeking an 
outlet for her high feelings, expressing her childish 
joy in her new possessions. 

Our neighboring church bell began to strike the hour. 
Nina brought down the foot which was in the air and, 
in a strained attitude, listened. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


193 


“Gree!” she said, jumping down to the floor. “It’s 
ten o’clock.” 

For a moment she stood irresolute, and then her face 
hardening, she walked up to Norman. 

“Gim’me two dollars.” 

The sudden demand hit him like a blow. 

“Won’t you stay to lunch with us?” he asked lamely. 

“No. I’ve got to go — now! I want two dollars.” 

Such bargaining is unbearable to me, I fled to my 
room. In a few minutes, Norman came to my door. 

“What can I do about this, Arnold?” 

“Oh pay her her wages, and let her go,” I said, 
“what else is there to do?” 

“My God,” he swore and stamped into my room. 
His face was white, his lip was bleeding a little where he 
had bitten it. “Somehow I can’t! What rotten crea- 
tures we all are! Of course I’ve known all about this — 
but we have to touch it — to realize it. . . . Why did 
I ever let her come into my life? I can’t send her 
back to it. She’s such a kid. And — Good God! — 
those damned, drunken Bowery sailors!” 

“Look here, Norman, you’re only making matters 
worse for her. She’ll get a beating if she don’t have the 
money to give her cadet. He’s. . . .” 

“Cadet?” Norman interrupted me, as though he 
had never heard the word before. He threw himself 
down on my bed. I had never seen him so moved. 

“Isn’t there any way out of it?” he groaned. 

I hate to plead absolute despair, but I could see no 
way out. So I tried to talk reasonably. 

“Don’t take it so hard. She’s bred to it. It isn’t 
half as bad to her as you think. It’s all she knows. She 
doesn’t despise this cur of a cadet, she hustles for — the 


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way we do. He’s her man — the pivot of her existence.” 
And I told him what she had said about Blackie. “He 
doesn’t beat her as often as he might. She feels rather 
fortunate, because he’s not worse. There isn’t any way 
out. They call it the most ancient profession. Her 
hard times haven’t begun yet, — she’s young. She’s 
living on the fat of the only land she ever knew. It 
isn’t exactly a bed of roses — but she’s never known a 
softer one.” 

“You’re a sophist!” he cried, jumping up. “Lies. 
Damn lies! She has known something better. My 
God — ^you should see her smile when she’s asleep! 
I can’t stop prostitution, but I can keep her out of the 
worst of it. She’s too young for these Bowery dens. 
I won’t let her go back to that damn pimp.” 

“Go slow,” I said. “What have you got to offer in 
exchange — for this cadet? I tell you, he’s the big 
factor of her life. Are you willing to take the time and 
trouble to fill his place? Money won’t do it. She can’t 
count above fifty. How are you going to amuse her? 
She’s used to excitement, to street life, the buzz of the 
Bowery. You’re going to offer her a gilded cage, an 
upholstered cell. It won’t work. And suppose you do 
succeed in giving her a taste for a finer life — ^what 
then? After you get through, she’ll only find the old life 
harder. What’s to become of her when you’re tired?” 

“You’re the devil’s advocate,” he said vehemently. 

“Perhaps. But are you a God? It would take all 
of a pretty lively God’s time to help — to really help — 
the lady.” 

“We’ll see what a man can do,” he said and stamped 
out, back to the library. In a few minutes he called me. 

“It’s beyond me,” he said. “It looks like fright. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


196 


She seems to like me and the place. I think she’d 
stay, if she wasn’t afraid of her old gang. See if you can 
reassure her.” 

“Nina,” I asked, “are you in love with Blackie?” 

She did not seem to be sure what the term meant. 

“He ain’t so bad.” 

“Well, if he were dead,” I tried again, “would you 
stay here with Mr. Benson?” 

“Sure,” she said. “Sure!” 

“You’re afraid of Blackie?” 

She nodded. 

“Well. Cheer up. He can’t hurt you here.” 

“He’d have me pinched,” she insisted, doggedly. 
“He’s got a pull with the cops. He’d sure have me 
sent to the Island, if I tried to shake him.” 

“Look here,” — again I flashed my badge — “It’s 
gold. That means I’m the same as a captain. I’ve got 
ten times more pull than Blackie. If he gets gay. I’ll 
lock him up. I’ll plant a gun in his pocket and send 
him up the river for concealed weapons. You don’t 
need to be afraid of him.” 

“Gee,” she said, “I’d like to stay. But he’d sure 
get me. He’s a bad one.” 

“He’ll be a dead one,” I said. “If he starts any- 
thing with a friend of mine.” 

I talked a few minutes more, but not till I showed 
her a pair of hand-cuffs, which I kept in my room by 
way of a curiosity, did she really believe she was safe 
and begin to smile again. 

Having established the family, I made an excuse to 
go out. I came back late at night and foimd Benson 
sitting alone in front of the fire, 

“She’s asleep,” he said. 


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“Must have had a lot of excitement,” I replied, “to 
be sleepy at this hour.” 

Having spent all the day outdoors, tramping in the 
open air, my brain had cleared a little. The thing had 
lost its distorted proportions, had fallen into focus. 
I could not understand how the affair had seemed so 
momentous to me. Such things, I knew very well, 
were happening on all sides, all the time. I was sorry 
for Norman. He would take it seriously and that, I 
felt, meant days of stress and sadness. My work in 
the Tombs had made me realize more certainly than 
he could the immense chances against his helping the 
girl. How many futile efforts I had made at first 
to lend a hand to some of these unfortunate women! 
I had given it up in defeat. For her, even if the powers 
of darkness pulled her back at last, it would mean at 
least a little oasis of comfort and consideration in the 
barren desert life the gods had mapped out for her. 

“There’s one thing, I must say for my soul’s good,” 
Norman said. “It’s a hard business, this analyzing 
of our motives. I’m sure I do want to save her, if I 
can, from being a public prostitute. But it’s equally 
true I want her for myself. I certainly despise this 
cadet, Blackie — ^but it’s also true that I’m suddenly 
become just ordinarily, humanly jealous of him. I 
don’t want to pretend that I’m wholly occupied in 
trying to be God-like.” 

“Well — I suppose I’m a cynic ” I said. “But I don’t 
expect any wonderful reformation — in either of you. 
Only don’t be unfair to her — don’t expect too much of 
her.” 

And so Nina became an accepted member of our 
household. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


197 


V 

Norman certainly set earnestly about the work of 
filling the place in Nina’s life previously held by Blackie. 

A few nights later I joined them in the middle of 
the performance at Koster and Bials. Nina looked 
away from the stage only long enough to say “Hello.” 
She was vibrant with excitement. Norman and I sat 
back in the box much more interested in her than in the 
commonplaces of the stage. We were both rather ill 
at ease in so senseless and light-minded a place. 

“This experience,” he said and I thought I caught 
a tone of apology in his voice, “is bringing me a closer 
understanding of the life of the poor. Of comse they’d 
resent my saying that Nina helped me to understand 
them. The poor are the worst of all snobs. We ‘re- 
formers’ beheve in the working-class a lot more than 
they do in themselves. It’s hard to get at them — we 
only meet the kind who know how to talk and most of 
them are mute. The chaps in my Studenten Verein 
long for education. They envy us who had it forced 
on us — and, of course, pose before us. You can’t really 
get to people who envy you. 

“But Nina never studied — barely reads — don’t want 
to. This sort of thing is her summum honum. I haven’t 
found anything that makes her happier than for me 
to put on evening clothes and take her to a flashy up- 
town restaurant. And she can’t help talking. She has 
no self-consciousness — no pose. What she says is 
reality. It’s the wisdom of the tenements she babbles 
out — ^the venerable philosophy of the poor. I’m learn- 
ing a lot from her.” 

“You needn’t apologize to me,” I said. 


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“I wasn’t apologizing,” he retorted. “Why should 
I?” 

“I said you needn’t.” 

“But you meant that I ought to — not to you, but 
to somebody. To whom? To God? To Mrs. Grundy? 
No — ^why should I apologize? ” — He threw his arm back 
so that his hand lay on my shoulder, it was the nearest 
our great love for each other ever came to the expres- 
sion of a caress — “I know you don’t approve, Arnold. 
But after all whom am I harming? You and I have 
been leading a pretty glum sort of a life. . . .” 

“You have,” I interrupted. “I’m in no position to 
chuck any self-righteous stones.” 

“Oh,” he said. “That’s what you meant when you 
said I need not apologize to you.” 

“I suppose so.” 

‘ ‘ W ell, to whom then? Tell me, ’ ’ he went on when I did 
not reply at once. “I’m really glad to have the opinion 
of a disinterested onlooker. It always helps. Tell me.” 

“Good God,” I replied to his challenge, “I’m no 
oracle — no omniscient voice of conscience. But it 
looks to me as though apologies were coming to Nina.” 

“Nina?” he said in surprise. 

“Yes. Don’t you see what’s happening? She’s 
falling in love with you. The real thing. She never 
saw anybody like you before. You’re like the shining 
white hero of the Bowery melodrama, who rescues the 
distressed heroine at the last minute — and marries her. 
Of course you and I know that the young milhonaires 
with tenor voices don’t marry the distressed damsels. 
But remember the kind of dope her mind is filled with. 
The wedding march always starts up, just before the 
curtain goes down.” 


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199 


The slap-stick comedians had finished their turn, the 
lights flared up and for the first time I noticed Nina’s 
resplendent gown. It was really a beautiful dress. If 
her hair had been done up with a little more skill and 
if Norman had not set all his authority against an 
excess of powder and paint she would have looked 
quite hke an uptown lady, of the Holland Houses or 
Rector’s, like those who go up Fifth Avenue to a ball 
or like those who turn over to Broadway and strut 
about in the theater lobbies to attract the attention 
of some gentleman from out of town. 

I complimented her on her appearance and, she, 
pleased as a child, told me how they had bought the 
dress that afternoon at a second-hand place on Sixth 
Avenue. The most glorious experience of her fife, 
before she had met Norman, was a short acquaintance 
with the woman who played the “lady villain” at 
“ Miner’s.” They had had rooms in the same house for 
a while. And this tragedienne had confided to Nina 
where she bought her second-hand clothes. Norman 
in a dinner jacket and Nina in a shirtwaist had attracted 
a good deal of attention, so he had decided that she 
must have a more suitable outfit for evening wear. 
She had led the way. And she told me with great 
animation — and frequent profanity — of the long and 
complicated dickering which had preceded the final 
purchase. The shop woman had asked S27.50 and 
Nina had stuck out for $17.50. At one stage of the 
wrangle the woman had led Nina aside and called her a 
httle fool. 

“‘He’s rich,’ she says to me. ‘He’ll pay. Don’t 
you know enough to stick him. I’ll knock off fifty 
cents, you say aU right. He’ll pay it. And tomorrow 


200 


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you come round and I’ll give you three dollars.’ Now 
wot do you think of that? Say. Do you know wot I 
did?” 

I could not guess. 

“I spit at her. I said ‘You ....’” (Among the 
other epithets were “cross-eyed” and “hook-nosed.”) 

“Well — ^how much did you pay at last?” I asked. 

“I think,” said Norman, “she could have got it for 
the seventeen. ...” 

“Sure, I could,” Nina interrupted. “But he was in 
a hurry and gave the . . . thief twenty. It . . . .” 

The lights went down, the ciirtain up and a woman, 
whom I would not have trusted to be kind to her own 
children, brought on a troupe of pitiable dogs. Nina 
turned back to watch the stage. 

“So you think,” Norman reverted to the former sub- 
ject, “that I ought to marry her?” 

“Of course not.” 

“If you have any reasons why I shouldn’t that are 
not pure snobbishness, I’d like to hear them.” 

“Good God,” I said. “You’re not seriously thinking 
of that, are you? ” 

“Hardly. But the idea has occiuxed to me. Why 
are you so frightened by it? ” 

It is strange what illogical creatures we are! Up 
to that moment I had been sorry for Nina. Every day 
I liked her more. And I saw with a sore heart the 
wondering, dazed admiration grow within her for her 
new master. Love is one of the most primeval pas- 
sions of the race. It is likely to be stronger — grander or 
more devastating — with primitive people than with 
those of us who have been civilized away from the 
parent type. I knew that Nina was falUng in love 


A MAN’S WORLD 


201 


with Norman in a way no woman of our class ever 
could. He had taken her into a fairy land and she 
could not, I felt, help expecting the fairy denouement. 

But the hint of the possibility of his really acting 
the part of the fairy prince, switched me about entirely. 
Nina became a negligible quantity. I worried only 
for him. It is needless to repeat the arguments against 
such a marriage which flooded me. They will occur to 
anyone. But to oppose it — I knew Norman too well — 
to try that. 

“Perhaps that would be the best solution of the mat- 
ter — ^for her.” 

“And for me?” he insisted. 

“Well. You're in a better position than I to decide 
that.” 

He laughed and leaned forward and pinched her ear. 
Suddenly she forgot the stage and getting up — ^reckless 
of all observers, — came back and kissed him. 

“Nina,” I asked, “if I pinched your ear, would you 
kiss me? ” 

“No,” she said, convincingly. “I’d slap your face.” 

“There’s only one thing I know about this, Arnold,” 
he said when she had returned to her seat. “It’s bring- 
ing me to life again. I don’t think I had really laughed 
for months. I’d forgotten there was such a thing as 
amusement in the world. I never was very strong on 
play. Of one thing I’m sure. It’s giving me a new 
insight — a new point of view — into lots of things. Only 
God knows how it will turn out.” 

VI 

I can only guess how it would have turned out, if 
Nina had not fallen among thieves. The most insoluble 


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mystery of life is the way in which the very highest 
human values sometimes spring out of the coarsest, 
most brutal wrongs. 

Although to Nina, I had spoken of Blackie in a flip- 
pant tone, I knew that he might cause trouble. I had 
spoken seriously about it to Norman, advising him to 
avoid as much as possible, and especially after dark, 
those parts of town, where Blackie’s gang was likely 
to be encountered. And together we had impressed 
on Nina and Guiseppe that she was never to go out 
alone. But as nothing was heard from him for some 
time, we all began to worry less. 

Nina had been with us about three weeks when the 
storm broke. I came home from my work about five 
one afternoon — and found bedlam. Guiseppe’s head 
was wrapped in a bloody bandage, Nina was sobbing 
wildly on the divan. 

It took some minutes before I could get a connected 
explanation from them. After lunch they had gone 
out to pay the butcher’s bill. Nina, having come from 
“his district” had won Guiseppe’s heart and he allowed 
her the pleasme of playing at housewife. It pleased 
her especially to pay the bills, so she was carrying the 
money — about thirty dollars. At the corner of Second 
Avenue and First Street, they had been surrounded 
by Blackie’s gang. Guiseppe had fought like a true 
Garibaldian until his head had been laid open with a 
knife and he had been thrown to the groimd by the 
young toughs. As quickly as they had come, they ran 
away. When he picked himself up, Nina was nowhere 
to be seen. He had asked the aid of a policeman, but 
had been laughed at. Then he had come to the Teepee, 
not finding either Benson or me, he had bound up his 


A MAN’S WORLD 


203 


head, and rallying some Garibaldian comrades, had 
set out on a search. This about three o’clock. A httle 
after four they had found her sobbing desperately be- 
hind an ash can in an alley-way. He had had some 
trouble in persuading her to come back. She was 
afraid of Blackie’s wrath — but more afraid that Norman 
would be angry on account of the money. 

Her story came out brokenly between spells of cry- 
ing. At the first attack, Blackie and another cadet 
had hustled her around the corner and up some stairs 
to a rented room. There they took away the money and 
beat her at leisure. The three who had manhandled 
Guiseppe came in shortly and kicked her about some 
more. There was nothing unusual in this — ^it is the well- 
established custom, by which the cadets keep their girls 
in slavery. I doubt if a day ever passes in this great 
metropolis of ours when the same scene is not enacted. 
They would probably have beaten her worse, if the 
windfall of money had not tempted them out to other 
pleasures. One after another the five men swore, em- 
phasizing their words with blows, that if she ever threw 
down Blackie again, they would kill her. Their parting 
advice to her was that if she had not earned five dollars 
by ten o’clock next morning, she could expect a fresh 
beating. 

Such stories had come to my knowledge before, they 
are the commonplaces of the police courts. But as 
Norman had said the first morning, such things must 
happen to someone near us, before we realize them. I 
took the handcuffs out of my desk, put fresh cartridges 
in my revolver. I had never set out after a man before 
in a like frame of mind. . . . 

When I think back to that evening’s work, the Tombs 


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A MAN’S WORLD 


and our convict prisons and all the bitter horror of our 
penal system, is no longer inexpUcable. It is only 
crystallized anger. The electric chair is only a formal 
symbol of collective hate. I am not at all proud of 
that man-hunt. A friend of mine had been hurt. “A 
friend of mine” — how many of man’s and nature’s 
laws have been broken with that preface! The political 
bosses look after their “friends.” More corrupt legis- 
lation has been passed because of “friendship” than 
for bribes. Well. A friend of mine had been touched. 
Everything by which I Uke to recognize myself as a 
civilized man dropped away. Suddenly I became an 
ally of the thing I was fighting against. As I rushed 
downstairs, with handcuffs in one pocket and a revolver 
in the other and miirder in my heart, I was just adding 
my contribution to the maintenance of the system which 
seems to me — ^when not angry — the most despicable 
element in our civilization. 

I left word for Benson to stay in when he came home, 
so that I could reach him by telephone. I had no def- 
inite plan when I left the Teepee — only somehow I 
was going to “get” Blackie. It was about an hour 
before I was able to locate him. The first fury of my 
anger had passed, it had had time to become cold and 
to harden. 

Pinning my badge on the outside of my coat, I kicked 
open the door of the “Tim O’Healy Social and Civic 
Club,” and covered the crowd of twenty young toughs 
who were in the room. 

“Hands up,” I ordered. They obeyed sullenly. 

“I want Blackie,” I said, “and no funny work from 
the rest of you.” 

For a moment they were irresolute. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


205 


“Say. You’re making a damn fool of yourself,” one 
of them protested, “Blackie’s president of this club — 
he’s right next to the Old Man. You’ll get broke 
sme.” 

“ Shut up. The Old Man sent me,” I lied. “ Blackie’s 
been getting too fly.” 

“Hell!” another piped up. “I seen the Old Man 
shake hands wid him an hour ago.” 

“Cut it out, kid,” I replied. “You talk too much. 
How long’s the Old Man been in the habit of warning 
guys he’s going to light on?” 

My lie worked — and saved bloodshed. It was the 
old tragedy of Cardinal Wolsey acted over again. None 
of the gang was really afraid of my revolver. One 
rush would have finished me. But they were all afraid 
of the Old Man’s ire. They drew away from Blackie. 

“It’s a lie,” he growled. “Me and the Old Man’s 
friends.” 

“You can talk that over with him in the morning. 
Come on.” 

He grew suddenly pale, half believing my story. He 
was such an ill-visaged, rat-eyed scoundrel, I regretted 
that they had not made a rush — at least I could have 
stopped his career. Single handed now, he submitted 
sullenly. 

“Wot’s the charge?” he asked, holding out his hands 
for the irons. 

“Murder in the first.” 

From the way he wilted, I think he must have had a 
murder on his conscience. 

“Now,” I said to the gang, “I don’t need any help 
from you. You’d better go right on with your game. 
You can call on him later on in the station house and 


206 


A MAN’S WORLD 


bail him out — if you want to get in wrong with the Old 
Man.” 

But instead of taking him to the nearby station house, 
I rushed him down town to the Tombs. The sergeant 
at the desk did not know him, so I entered him under a 
false name. A search revealed quite an arsenal on his 
person, a short barreled revolver, a knife and some 
brass-knuckles. I plastered him with all the charges I 
could think of — disorderly conduct, concealed weapons, 
robbery in the first degree, felonious assault. Nina 
might be too frightened to testify to the robbery, but 
Guiseppe would swear to the assault. 

As soon as I had him in a cell, I telephoned to Nor- 
man that all was going well and rushed uptown to the 
home of the district attorney. The fates were playing 
into my hands, for at that time — as is usual between 
elections — there was civil war within the organization. 
The district attorney was a machine man, but was one 
of the leaders of the rebellious faction. He heard my 
story with great glee, a serious criminal charge against 
one of the Old Man’s lieutenants was fine gist for his 
mill. He promised to push the case and put it on be- 
fore O’Neil, whom the Old Man could not reach. 

Then I went to the “Old Man.” I have already 
written of my encounters with him. In general I had 
established friendly relations with the machine poli- 
ticians. Some of them, especially the judges, liked me 
personally. Ryan’s friendship for me was, I think, 
real. But of what was back of the Old Man’s easy 
going familiarity, I was less certain. I could not 
coimt on his friendship. But he was sme to find out 
what I had done. And there was nothing to be gained 
by letting some one else tell him. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


207 


That night I found him in the back room of his 
brother-in-law’s saloon. He looked up at me, his eyes, 
usually cordial, decidedly hostile. 

“Say, young man, haven’t you been getting pretty 
gay?” 

“I sure have,” I admitted. “And I’ve come round 
to tell you what I did and why I did it.” I gave him 
the story from beginning to end, even my talk with the 
district attorney. 

“Well,” he said, when I was through, “you’ve played 
it pretty slick — so far. But how are you going to keep 
that gang from shooting you up, when they find out 
what you put over on them?” 

“It’ll be a poor friend of Blackie,” I said, “who 
takes a shot at me. I’ve got too many friends on the 
bench. And the district attorney would sure hand 
him a dirty deal.” 

He nodded assent. According to his lights the Old 
Man fought fairly. He had no mean personal ani- 
mosity. He handed me a cigar. I smoked it silently 
while he was thinking things out. 

I had put a knife into a vulnerable spot — ^had 
thrown the apple of discord where it was most likely 
to cause trouble. Tammany Hall is a latter-day 
feudalism. Ability to protect one’s vassals is the key- 
note of the organization. The “ward heeler” is a 
petty coimt, the “district leaders” are the great 
dukes. And the kingship of this realm is not hereditary 
— ^it is not even a life-tenure. I do not think it has ever 
happened, certainly not in my time, that a boss has 
held his position till death. And there have been very 
few voluntary abdications. 

The Old Map was facing a determined rebellion, 


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A MAN’S WORLD 


Not to be able to save Blackie would be a great blow 
to his prestige. Many a district leadership has been 
lost on a lesser issue. He knew he could get no help 
from the district attorney’s office, without patching 
up a humiliating peace. I could see only one outlet 
for him — to repudiate Blackie. He could easily have 
found some excuse for backing up my lie. I am sure 
this thought was in his mind, written all over with the 
word “discretion.” But in expecting him to take this 
easy way out, I misjudged him. He loved a fight. 
These factional struggles were what made life interesting 
within the organization and attractive to men of his 
type. He had never been defeated. He did not like to 
lie down before me, who in his eyes was not even a 
regular warrior — just a sort of banditti. 

“I’ve sent a man down to bail him out,” he said 
abruptly. “ I guess there is going to be a fight. You’ll 
get my answer in the morning. Good night.” 

I found Norman in a Berserker fury. He was in- 
clined to quarrel with me for not having shot Blackie 
on sight. A doctor had sewed up the gash in Guiseppe’s 
head. Beyond some angry black and blue blotches, 
Nina had sustained no injuries. As soon as she had 
been reassured about the lost money, she had recovered 
her spirits. 

The Old Man’s answer would have caught us una- 
wares — as he intended it should — ^if it had not been 
for a fortunate enmity of mine. I suppose there were 
many people in the Tombs who disliked me, but no one 
hated me so cordially as Steger, the agent of the society 
for the Protection of Childhood. Our feud was of long 
standing. He was an insignificant little man, to whom 
no one ever paid any attention. He was employed by 


A MAN’S WORLD 


209 


the society to push the charges against everyone ac- 
cused of violating the laws for the protection of child- 
hood and to urge the heaviest penalties against all who 
were found guilty. My business was to persuade the 
co\irt to temper justice with mercy. Inevitably we 
came into conflict. He would mge the judge to im- 
pose the maximum sentence, and I would plead for 
leniency. My personal standing was better than his 
and I invariably won out in these frequent tilts. His 
rancor against me had always made me smile. I met 
him as I entered the court house. 

“Seems to be a nice sort of fellow — ^that room-mate 
of yours,” he sneered. 

“What’s up?” 

“You’ll know quick enough. Take my advice and 
disappear. It will be hard for you to disprove com- 
plicity.” 

It was enough to give me the tip. Within five min- 
utes I had the whole story from one of my fellow 
‘ ‘ county detectives, ’ ’ who had seen the warrant. Blackie 
and the Old Man had got Nina’s mother to make an 
afiidavit that her daughter was only seventeen years 
old. Steger had joyfully sworn out a warrant against 
Benson, charging him with rape in the second degree — 
states prison, ten years. 

In the language of the Tombs, they “had the goods 
on him.” There is no getting away from this charge 
if the girl is under eighteen. The question of whether 
or not she has “led a previously chaste life,” has no 
bearing in rape cases. 

It did not take me long to reach a telephone. Ben- 
son had left the Teepee. As the detective was on the 
way with the warrant, I told Guiseppe to take Nina 


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A MAN’S WORLD 


at once to the Caf6 Boulevard — not to wait a minute! 
I luckily caught Norman at the club, just as he was 
calling for his mail. The fact that I was “compound- 
ing a felony,” did not occur to me till hours afterwards. 

I reached the cafe and transferred Guiseppe and Nina 
to a private room, before Norman arrived. He was 
certainly in a belligerent frame of mind when he did 
come. He had brought his family lawyer with him, 
a pompous old man, with gray mutton-chop whiskers 
and a tendency towards apoplexy. His dignity was 
sadly ruffled by having been drawn into a vulgar crim- 
inal case. 

Norman and I went with him into another room for a 
council of war. He was of course ready, he told us, to 
act as his client directed, but he felt it his duty to point 
out that he was an older man than we, with some 
knowledge of worldly affairs. He hoped that I with 
my familiarity with the criminal courts might point 
out some more satisfactory solution than the marriage 
which his client in a nobly Quixotic spirit was contem- 
plating. We must allow an older and more experienced 
man to say that marriage was a serious — if not actually 
a sacerdotal affair. It was a gamble under the best 
circumstances. And in this case, socially so inexpedient, 
financially so disproportionate, and personally — ^well — 
so unprecedented it would be. . . . He hemmed and 
hawed, ruffled his scanty hair and patted his paunch — - 
in short could not I offer a suggestion. 

“ Go ahead and talk,” Norman growled. “Get it out 
of your system.” 

“They could skip to Canada, temporarily,” I said. 
“If we drop the case against Blackie, they’ll squash 
this warrant.” 


A MAN’S WORLD 


211 


The lawyer nodded approval. 

“Are you all through?” Norman asked. “Well, 
then, listen to me. I’m not going to skip. I’m not going 
to let up on that scoundrel. I’m not going to ‘quit’! 
Not for a minute! I’d be on my way to the City Hall 
marriage bureau already, if old law-books here didn’t 
say I needed the consent of Nina’s mother. If you want 
to be helpful — produce a mother-in-law. Buy the old 
lady, kidnap her, club her — anything — but produce her 
in a consenting frame of mind. If you don’t want to 
help — ^run along. I’ll turn the trick myself. It’s a 
cinch. We’ll give ourselves up and be married in the 
Tombs.” 

The lawyer tried to say something, but Norman was 
looking at me. 

“All right,” I said. “I’ll fix that. Don’t take any 
chances by going out of this private room. As soon as I 
snare the old lady. I’ll telephone. It maybe a long hunt, 
but sit tight.” 

It was not a long hunt. The Old Man, never dream- 
ing that a rich young man like Benson would cut the 
Gordian knot by marrying a prostitute, had not taken 
the precaution of hiding the mother. I found her doz- 
ing in front of her fruit store. She had not heard of 
Nina for several months, until the night before when 
they had made her sign the affidavit about her age. 
She would have consented to Nina’s murder for fifty 
dollars, the marriage was arranged for ten. 

When she had made her mark on a legal paper drawn 
up by the lawyer, we sent Guiseppe home to prepare 
limch and entertain the police. He was not to tell them 
anything, except that we would be back soon. Nor- 
man and Nina, the lawyer and I, rode down to the City 


212 


A MAN’S WORLD 


Hall in a closed carriage. It rather startled me, the 
speed with which they tied the knot. Back at the Teepee 
we found a detective and a policeman. There was a 
tableau. 

"Good day, gentlemen,” Norman said. "Allow me 
to present you to Mrs. Benson.” 

He handed the certificate to the detective. 

"Now,” he said, when the man had read it, "get 
out. And look here — ^you policeman. Tell your cap- 
tain that my wife has been brutally attacked in his 
precinct. It’s up to him to protect her. Tell him that 
if I have to commit murder, it will be his fault.” 

Half an hour later, while we were eating, the tele- 
phone rang. It was the Old Man. 

"Hello,” he said. "Give them my congratulations. 
Say. You beat me to it in great shape. Too bad you 
ain’t in politics. I’d like to have you on my staff. 
And say — Blackie has gone on a railroad journey for his 
health. Now you fellows ain’t going to be nasty are 
you and make me pay that five thousand dollars bail? 
The club’s got a new president. He’s just been round 
to see me, says the boys are sorer than hell over the 
job you put up on them. I told him to keep the lid on. 
I says to him, ‘Those two young gentlemen are my 
friends.’ You are, ain’t you? ” 

"Well,” I said, "when I’ve got what I want, I quit 
fighting. Forgotten all about that case. The only 
thing which might remind me of it, would be the sight 
of Blackie’s face.” 

"Fine,” he replied. "That’s cleaned up. And 
say — they’re taking on some more men in the 
dock department to-morrow — ^room for any of your 
friends. And — don’t forget to give my best wishes 


A MAN’S WORLD 


213 


to the bride — and groom. I like a fellow that’s a real 
sport.” 

An hour later a messenger boy arrived with a great 
bunch of white roses for the bride. On the card, the 
Old Man had scrawled; “Good luck.” So peace was 
reestablished. 


VII 

The morning after the wedding, Norman found me in 
the library reading what the newspapers had to say 
about it. “Eccentric Millionaire Weds Street Walker.” 
“Prominent Socialist Leader, to avoid state prison, 
married a little girl he had seduced.” When my friend, 
the protector of children, found that we had beaten the 
warrant, he had taken this way of venting his spleen. 

“I’m glad,” Norman said, as he glanced at the head- 
lines, “that Nina doesn’t read newspapers. These 
might bother her.” 

But he made me read them aloud as he drank his 
coffee. And all the while his look of amused content- 
ment deepened. 

“God! That sounds good,” he commented. “I 
never knew just how to do it. I’ve spent many a sleep- 
less night trying to think out some effective way of 
telling the ‘best people’ to go to hell — some way of 
spitting in the eyes of the smug citizens — so they 
wouldn’t think it was a joke. Every time I get mad — 
really open up — and tell the gang what I think of them; 
how the stench of their hypocrisies offends my nostrils, 
it adds to my reputation as a wit. I guess this will fix 
them! You know that thing of Heine’s. ...” 

He jumped up and pulled the “Memoirs” from the 
shelf and read me the passage where Heine tells of his 


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A MAN’S WORLD 


boyish encounter with “Red Safchen,” the hangman’s 
little daughter. Although the good people of the vil- 
lage where he went to school tolerated the office of 
public executioner, they would have no dealing with 
the officer. His family was mercilessly ostracised. 
Heinrich took pity on the daughter and once in a sudden 
exaltation he kissed her. In these words he ends his 
account: “I kissed her not only because of my tender 
feeling for her, but in scorn of society and all its dark 
prejudices.” 

“That’s it,” Norman said gleefully. “I’ve always 
wished I could find a hangman’s daughter and kiss her 
somewhere in public — show the empty-headed, full- 
bellied gang how I despise them. Nina’s done it for 
me.” 

Nina had taken a very passive part in all these pro- 
ceedings. She had done what she was told to do, said 
what she was told to say, without question. How 
passive a part it had been none of us realized at the 
time. But that afternoon when I came back from 
the Tombs, I found her in earnest conversation with 
Guiseppe. 

“Say,” she said, after he had gone, “I want to talk 
to you.” 

But she found it hard to begin. 

“What is it?” I encouraged her. 

“The old man, Guiseppe, is a fool,” she blurted out. 
“Says your friend married me.” 

“Well. That isn’t foolish. He did marry you.” 

“Aw hell! Don’t lie to me. Fine men like him don’t 
marry girls they pick up in the street.” 

“Not very often,” I admitted. “But Benson cer- 
tainly married you.” 


A MAN’S WORLD 


215 


She sighed profoundly, as though there was no hope 
of getting the truth in a world of men. 

“You must think I’m easy,” she persisted. “He 
won’t never marry me. Of course it don’t matter how 
poor you are. Sometimes rich men from uptown marry 
factory girls, like in ‘From Rags to Riches’ — but not 
girls like me. Not girls that have been bad.” 

I tried to translate into the lingo of the Bowery the 
old proposition that it is never too late to mend. And 
then I asked her, “Didn’t you go to the City Hall 
with him?” 

“Don’t I know? Haven’t I seen people get married? ” 
she retorted half in discouragement, half in anger. 
“Don’t I know you have to have a white dress and a 
priest? Wot’s the game? ” 

I did my best to explain that in America, we have 
civil marriages which are just as binding as the ones in 
a church. But all I could get from her was a reluctant 
admission that there might be two varieties of marriage 
— a half way kind at the City Hall and a truly kind 
with a priest. She insisted that it was a sin to have 
children without a white dress and a ring. 

When Norman came in, I took him to my room and, 
closing the door, told him about it. He rolled around 
on the bed and kicked his heels in the air. 

“Think of it!” he howled. “Me — done up in orange 
blossoms ! Me — going to a priest ! Arnold, get out your 
white gloves — ^polish your silk hat — ^you’ll have to see 
me through with this.” 

He dashed out to order Nina’s dress. But he said 
nothing to her about it, pledged me to secrecy. It 
was a complete surprise to her when it came. 

I have never seen anything in all my life so wonder- 


216 


A MAN’S WORLD 


ful as her face, when she opened the package — ^the 
gradual melting away of doubt, the gradual awakening 
of certainty — and then the way she walked over to 
Norman, her eyes so wide with joy, and threw herself 
sobbing into his arms. I had to go to my room to hide 
my tears. 

In a few minutes, Norman came in — his voice was 
also stiff and husky. 

“What in hell do you think is the latest?” he asked. 
“She’s gone off with Guiseppe — to confessional! Says 
it would be a sin to get married without it. My God! 
My God!” 

I was the “best man” and Guiseppe gave her away 
in the crypt of the Jesuit Chmch. We came home 
and dressed — all four of us — and went up to Delmonico’s 
to diimer. 

We made something of a sensation as we threaded 
our way between the tables to our place. Guiseppe, 
in evening clothes, with all his campaign medals, looked 
like the veriest nobleman. Nina was wonderful. Usu- 
ally she was gay beyond words when taken to a res- 
taurant, but this evening she was very solemn and a 
httle pale. Of course a number of people recognized 
Norman and gossip started in vigorously. But of this 
Nina was unconscious. Her solemnity went deeper 
than that. When the cocktails were brought, she re- 
fused hers. 

“Why not?” Norman asked. 

A little blush started in her cheeks, fought its way to 
her temples and down her throat. 

“What’s the matter?” he asked, 

“I’m married now,” she stammered. “Good women 
don’t drink cocktails.” 


A MAN’S WORLD 


217 


We both glanced about and saw that if Nina’s state- 
ment had been audible, it would have caused a protest : 

“Why — there’s Mrs. Blythe over there,” Norman 
said. “ She built a church. She’s drinking a cocktail — 
she’s awfully good.” 

“No, she ain’t,” Nina insisted doggedly. “She’s 
painted herself. She’s a sporting girl.” 

Norman looked very solemn. It was several seconds 
before he spoke. 

“All right, little wife. I’ll never ask you to drink 
any more cocktails.” 

The problem of what to do with Nina’s mother 
troubled us somewhat for a time, but it solved itself 
with rather dizzying simphcity. She told Norman 
that with five hundred dollars for capital she could buy 
a larger frvut store and live in comfort. He investigated 
the matter carefully and, as it seemed to him a sound 
business proposition, he gave her the money. That 
was the last we saw of her. The gossips of the neighbor- 
hood said that one of her boarders, attracted by this 
magnificent dowry, had married her and that they 
had returned to Italy. I could not discover the man’s 
name. And we never heard of her again. 

It was a joyous thing to watch Nina in the weeks and 
months that followed her marriage. Always I had a 
sort of impatience with Norman. It did not seem to 
me that he realized what was going on within her, how 
her soul under the strains and stresses of her new sur- 
roundings, was being shaped to beauty. 

There was much discussion in the scientific circles 
of those days over the relative force of heredity and 
environment in the formation of character. Most of 
the pundits were incUned to the belief that the con- 


218 


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genital element, the abilities and tendencies with which 
we are born, is the greatest part of us. Watching Nina, 
kept me from this error. It may be that she was un- 
usually plastic, peculiarly adaptable. But the change 
was amazing. It was not only that she left off swearing, 
learned to handle a fork as we did, came to wash her 
face without being urged. It went much deeper than 
this. 

I thought that Norman was giving small account of 
the change. I did not realize I was unjust to him for a 
good many months. But one day I went to the station 
to see him off on a western trip. Just before the train 
started, he laid hold of my arm. 

“We — Nina is expecting a baby.” 

He swung aboard the train and waved his hand to 
me. The news meant that he was not afraid of Nina’s 
heredity. That he had not told me until there was no 
chance of discussing it, gave me a sudden pang of 
jealousy. Without my noticing it, a new element had 
come into my friend’s life, which was too holy for him 
to talk over with me. It made me feel very lonely for 
a while. 

In the months which were left to her time, Nina went 
about the Teepee — singing. The wonder grew in her 
eyes, as did also the certainty of her high calling. To 
me — an outsider — ^there was something uncomfortable 
in the sight of their happiness those last weeks before 
the baby came. I felt like a trespasser, a profaner of 
some high mystery. But Norman begged me not to 
leave. 


BOOK VI 


I 

Of course Ann was immensely interested in Nina’s 
adventure. From the first she was sure it would turn 
out well. Ignoring the shell, as she always did, the ker- 
nel of the matter did not seem at all strange to her. 
She went much further than the Professor in “Sartor 
Resartus,” who thought of people without clothes. 
She stripped them of their vocations as well. For her 
there existed no such categories as “street car conduc- 
tors,” “actresses,” “bank presidents,” “seamstresses.” 
She saw only men and women. The way they earned 
their living was as unimportant to her as the mode of 
their garments. It was not what people did, but the 
way they did it, which mattered. A man, who had 
chosen cooking as a career and cooked passionately, 
threw all his energy into soups and souffles ranked 
higher with her than a listless, perfunctory poet. The 
doing heartily of any job whatsoever would sanctify 
it in her eyes. Of course she knew that working at the 
match trade or with white lead poisons a person, that 
some of the “dusty trades” ruin the lungs. But it 
would have been hard to get her to admit that pleasant, 
stimulating work might make a person more moral or 
that a vile job can damn a man. Nina’s success in 
her new role, seemed to Ann, to depend entirely upon 
the intensity with which she entered it. It mattered 
219 


220 


A MAN’S WORLD 


not at all whether she had been previously a street 
walker or a queen. This point of view — utterly different 
from mine — I found very common among the people I 
met at Cromley. 

Sooner or later I made the acquaintance of most of 
the leading anarchists of this country and many from 
abroad. They were sure of a welcome from the Bartons, 
sure of a meal and of any bed or sofa in the house which 
chanced to be vacant. They were an interesting and 
in many ways an attractive group. Like Ann, they 
were little interested in the outward accidents of a 
person’s life, but very intense in regard to a rather in- 
definite inner fife. They were, of course, vehemently 
opposed to the police. But I was accepted without 
question. I remember old Herr Most said, one time, 
his long gaunt forefinger tapping my badge, 

“It’s not that which makes a policeman. It’s not 
the symbol we’re fighting but the habit of mind.” 

The anarchists are beginning to take the place in 
our fiction which was formerly held by the gypsy. Half 
a dozen novels of the last few years have had such types 
as their heroes. It is hard to resist the romantic charm 
of a person who is utterly unattached. The vagabond 
who, in a land of conventional dwelling houses, sleeps 
out under the stars, casts a spell over us. These an- 
archists are intellectual nomads. In order that they 
may be free to wander according to their fancy in the 
realm of thought, to stroll at will in the pleasant valleys 
of poesy, to climb at times up onto the great white 
peaks of dreams, that in the winter days they may 
trek south to meet their friend, the sun, they have fore- 
sworn the clumsier impedimenta of our traditional ideas. 
As the Beduoin and the tramp despise the “Cit” who 


A MAN’S WORLD 


221 


is kept at home by his business engagements, by the 
cares of his family and of his lands and goods, so these 
anarchists look down on us who are held stationary in 
the world of thought. 

I remember a young Russian exile, who spoke Eng- 
lish so faultlessly, after the manner of Macaulay’s 
Essays, that it seemed queer, saying that he was “a 
cynic of the material.” It struck me as a wonderfully 
apt phrase to distinguish their way of thinking from 
the more usual. Of all the "kitchenside of life,” — 
the meals we eat, the clothes we wear, the beds we sleep 
in, bankbooks, and property deeds, of vested rights and 
established institutions, of the applause and approba- 
tion of the mob — which most of us consider important, 
they were cynical. I, for instance, must admit to a 
certain unreasoning respect for clean linen. It is hard 
for me, even in the face of ocular demonstration, to 
separate it from clean straight thinking. But this 
group which gathered at Mrs. Barton’s was certainly 
indifferent in the matter. Ann’s bacteriological train- 
ing had made her a fervent apostle of cleanliness. 
“Germs,” she would say, “are only filth.” But as 
often as not, some of the guests were evidently unafraid 
of microbes. Some of the dirtiest of them were the 
cleanest, straightest thinkers. 

I have never met any other group of people who so 
sympathetically understood how I felt about life. 
In one way or another they had come to see hfe as I 
did — ^as I believe anyone, having the energy to avoid 
hardening, would see it, if they worked long in the 
Tombs. Try it yourself. Go into the Tombs — there 
is one in every town — if you have any love of justice 
and rectitude in your being you will come out in violent 


222 


A MAN’S WORLD 


revolt against the smug complacency of our social 
machine. You will find anarchists pleasant people to 
talk with. 

But when they tried to convert me, I was cold. I 
could go with them all the way in their criticism of and 
contempt for things as they are. Much of what they 
said and wrote seemed to me platitudes — I had seen 
it also keenly myself. I knew the things of which 
our civilization can boast, its universities, and culture, 
its music and painting, the triumphs of its sciences, its 
marvelous subjugation of nature, its telegraphs and 
transcontinental trains, and all this seemed very small 
return for the frightful price we pay. For years I had 
been living in the slums. I knew the debit side of the 
ledger also — the tuberculosis laden tenements, the 
sweat-shops, the children who never grow up, the 
poverty, the crime. The time they spent in trying to 
convince me that society was bankrupt, was wasted. 
And the dream of communism they offered in its place 
was enticing. I do not see how anyone can object to 
the ideals of anarchism, unless they are of the turn 
of mind which enjoys the kind of arrangements we now 
have — ^where one can steal and murder and still be re- 
spectable. Of course a scamp would have a pretty bad 
time in a communist society. But the means by which 
they hoped to realize their dream — ^well — that was a 
different affair. 

It is possible to believe in all the miracles of Jesus — 
from his birth to his resurrection — but it takes “faith.” 
It is possible to believe that, if by some miracle we were 
all made free we would be very much better than we 
are. The anarchists hold that our vices come from 
our manifold slavery. That is their creed. But it 


A MAN’S WORLD 


223 


also takes "faith.” I have not been able to believe 
anything in that way, since I was sixteen. 

But I was quite ready to agree with them that much 
work such as mine was pitifully futile. 

II 

There were two incidents in my work which grew to 
great proportions in my mind. They happened close 
together, when I had been about seven years in the 
Tombs. 

Walking one day along a corridor of the prison, past 
the cells, my attention was caught by an old man. He 
sat on a low stool, close to the grated door, his face 
pressed against the bars. On it was written appalling, 
abject despair. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked. 

He glared at me sullenly. It was some time before 
he replied. 

“They’ve got me wrong,” he said. 

The slate on the door of his cell gave the history of 
the case. His name was Jerry Barnes. Arrested three 
weeks ago, without bail, he had pled guilty the day 
before to burglary in the third degree, and was awaiting 
sentence before Justice Ryan. 

“What did you plead guilty for?” I asked, “if they 
had you wrong?” 

“ Wot’s the use? You won’t believe me.” 

With a little urging his story came in a rush. He 
was an old-timer, had done three bits in state prison, 
but coming out four years before he had decided to 
“square it.” He wanted to die “on the outside.” He 
had no trade, but had wrung out a meagre living, stuff- 
ing straw into mattresses. In the rush season he earned 


224 


A MAN’S WORLD 


as much as a dollar a day. Sometimes only twenty 
cents. And sometimes there was no work at all. He 
slept in a ten-cent lodging house, ate ten cent meals — 
forty cents a day, plus twenty cents a week for tobacco. 
What was left went into the Bowery Savings Bank. 
He wanted to have enough so he would not be buried 
in the Potters’ Field. It had been a barren life. But 
the fear of prison — the fear which only an old-timer, 
who wants to die outside, knows — ^had held him to it. 

Coming home from work one night he had stopped 
to watch a fire. As the crowd broke up he saw on the 
sidewalk several bags of tobacco and some boxes of 
cigarettes. He picked them up and almost immediately 
was grabbed by two detectives. 

While the crowd had been watching the fire, someone 
had broken into a tobacco store and looted it. Thd 
detectives led Jerry to Central Office, identified him 
by the Bertillon records, and charged him with burglary 
in the second degree, for which the maximum sentence 
is ten years. 

Jerry said that he knew nothing of the burglary. 
When he had been brought into court the district at- 
torney had told him that if he would consent to plead 
guilty of burglary in the third degree, for which the 
maximum is only five years, he would intercede with 
the judge and ask for a light sentence. 

Jerry had been hopeless of proving his innocence in 
the face of his previous record and the fact that some 
of the proceeds of the burglary had been found on his 
person. He had no friends. He did not believe that 
a poor man had any chance in court. So he had pled 
guilty in the hopes of a short sentence. 

His story rang true, but I took great pains to verify it. 


A MAN'S WORLD 


225 


The police believed that Jerry was one of three or 
four who committed the bmglary. One hundred dol- 
lars in money and twice as much stock had been taken. 
They had no evidence against Jerry except the packages 
of tobacco found in his pockets, and his record. 

Mr. Kaufman, his employer, spoke highly of him. 
Jerry had been a regular applicant for work, and a pre- 
ferred employee. If there was any work at all it was 
given to him. And sometimes in slack seasons, he had 
been employed out of charity. Kaufman said he would 
be glad to come to court and testify to Jerry’s regular 
habits during the last three years. The lodging house 
keeper was also willing to appear on his behalf. Jerry 
had earned a definite reputation for quietness and 
sobriety. He had kept very much to himself and cer- 
tainly had not been associating with professional crim- 
inals. 

I took the whole story to Judge Ryan. He always 
placed great reliance on my judgment in such matters, 
and I was convinced of Jerry’s innocence. Ryan said 
he would allow him to withdraw his plea of guilty and 
stand trial. I had a harder time persuading Jerry to 
do so. He was inclined to take his medicine — let well 
enough alone. He might live through a couple of years 
in prison and die outside, but he was afraid to take a 
chance on a long term. But finally I argued him into 
doing it. 

When at last the case came up for trial, Ryan was 
off on his vacation, and it was set down before O’Neil, 
with whom I had less than no influence. Mr. Kauf- 
man had been called out of town by the death of his 
father. No one appeared to speak for Jerry except 
the lodging house keeper, who made a poor showing. 


226 


A MAN’S WORLD 


being mightily frightened under the cross-examination. 
The district attorney produced a handful of Rogues’ 
Gallery photographs of Jerry. The police expanded 
their memory to the point of swearing that they had 
seen Jerry in the rifled premises. The jury convicted 
him without leaving the room, of burglary in the second 
degree. And the judge gave him eight years. . . . 

I sneaked out of the court room and locked myself 
in my office. It is not a pleasant thing to think about or 
write down even now. ... I am sure he was innocent. 
If I had not meddled — he had not asked me to — ^he 
would have gotten off light. And eight years was the 
same as “life” for him. 

The next two days when duty took me into the prison, 
I kept as far as might be from Jerry’s cell. What 
could I say to him? 

But on the afternoon of the second day, I met him 
by accident face to face. He was one of a line of ten 
men, old and young, chained together — ^just starting 
up the river. He jumped at me so hard, it threw the 
entire line off their feet. His slow, desperate curses 
as they led them out to the prison-van still haunt me, 
sometimes, at night. 

Now that Jerry is dead — he died during the fourth 
year — I, more than ever before, wish I could believe 
in a life beyond death. I cannot imagine another life 
in which we would not understand and forgive the 
wrongs done us in this. And I cannot think of any- 
thing I would rather have than Jerry’s forgiveness. 

About the same time, I had taken up the work of 
supervising the men “on parole” from the reformatory. 
It was very hard to find satisfactory employment for 
these boys. I wrote an article which was translated 


A MAN’S WORLD 


227 


and printed in one of the Yiddish dailies. I described 
the reformatory, told of the conditions on which the 
inmates were paroled and the civic duty of encourag- 
ing them to make good. And I appealed to the Jews 
to help me find work for the sons of their race. Many 
offers of employment came as a result of this article. 

One day a fine old Russian Jew, named Lipinsky, 
came to my office on this business. He was a fur 
merchant on Second Avenue. He and his son, about 
nineteen, worked together, and he could use an assistant 
who would accept apprentice wages and live in the 
family. I liked the old man; he was a sturdy type, 
had worked up through endless hardships and re- 
verses to the point where he was beginning to make a 
surplus and win respect in his trade. He was ambitious 
for his son, on whom all his hopes centered. 

It seemed to me an unusually fine opening, the home 
conditions I felt sure would be good, and the first Jew- 
ish boy who came down — ^his name was Levine — I sent 
to Lipinsky. I called two or three times and every- 
thing seemed to be going well. But after about three 
months the crash came. Levine and young Lipinsky 
were arrested in the act of burglary in a large fur ware- 
house. They had several hundred dollars’ worth of 
choice ermine skins in their bags. Young Lipinsky 
went to pieces under the “third degree” and con- 
fessed everything. They had been at it for more than a 
month. It had been a strong combination — his knowl- 
edge of furs and Levine’s skill with the “jimmy.” In 
an apartment on Fifteenth Street, where they had been 
keeping two girls, the police recovered large quantities 
of expensive flu’s. 

Levine got seven years in state prison, and young 


228 


A MAN’S WORLD 


Lipinsky, because he had turned state’s evidence and 
because of my influence, got off with a sentence to the 
reformatory. 

Old Lipinsky was utterly ruined. His rivals accused 
him of complicity. The detectives raided his store. 
They found nothing, but it was enough to ruin his 
credit. He peddles shoe-strings now on Hester Street. 

But greater than this material loss was the blow to 
his heart — his hope in his only son shattered. He 
knocks at the door to my office now and then to ask 
news of his boy. It is sad news I have to tell him. His 
son is now doing his second term in state prison, a 
confirmed crook. 

Old Lipinsky does not curse me as Jerry did — he 
reUes on me to pay his rent and coal bills. He weeps. 

I tried to look at these discouraging incidents, with 
reason. I tried to tell myself that my intentions had been 
good, and that intentions counted more than results. 
I tried to recall the very many famihes to whom I had 
brought a blessing. It is not a matter to boast of — nor 
to be modest about. The work I had chosen gave me 
daily opportunity to bring help to those in awful need. 
But try as I would to preserve what seemed to my reason 
proper proportions, the curses of Jerry, the waihng of 
old Lipinsky, drowned out all else. It obsessed me. 

Looking back over those years it is hard for me to 
decide whether Norman was the determining element 
in my thinking, or whether from different angles, by 
different processes of mind, we reached the same con- 
clusions. Certain it is that many times a conversation 
with him would precipitate fluid-vague feehngs of 
mine into the definite crystals of intellectual con- 
victions. A talk on this subject — of intentions and re- 


A MAN’S WORLD 


229 


suits — stands out as clear in my mind as any memory 
I have of him. 

It started, I believe, by some jovial effort of his 
to lift me out of my profound discouragement. We 
had lit our pipes, Guiseppe was clearing the supper 
litter from the table. Nina was dividing her attention 
between a pile of to-be-darned stockings in her lap and 
Marie, who was safe in her cradle and needed no at- 
tention at all. Nina was a constant factor in all our 
arguments in those days. She was always silent. Much 
of our talk must have been far above her compre- 
hension, but she would sit on the divan, her feet tucked 
up under her, and listen for hours on end. Her presence 
in some subtle way contributed to our discussions. 
The ancient Egyptians brought a skeleton to their 
feasts to remind them of death. Nina was to us a 
symbol of life — a silent chorus of actuaUty. Some 
word or look of mine that night showed Norman how 
desperately serious was my discouragement, and he 
dropped his flippant tone. 

"After all intentions don’t justify anything. We 
must demand results. But what results? When I see 
a chap, whose efforts I know to be good, get discouraged, 
I’m sure he’s looking for the wrong kind of results. 
Of course, our unseen, unintentional influence is much 
greater than the influence we consciously exert. Some 
little of it we know about, the greater part we ignore. 
You’re worried because some of your well-intentioned 
efforts have gone wrong, because our fight for a re- 
formatory ended in a fizzle. These two cases, you 
speak of — Jerry and Lipinsky— are on yom: mind. 
There are probably dozens of others, just as bad, which 
you don’t know about. Are they the kind of results 


230 


A MAN’S WORLD 


on which you have a right to judge your work? I 
think not. 

“The one real result of human activity is knowledge. 
Zola makes a character in ‘Travail’ say that science 
is the only true revolutionist. And if science is some- 
thing more than dead laboratory data, if it’s live work- 
able human knowledge, a real aid to straight thinking, 
he is right. 

“That must be the test of your activity — the judg- 
ing result. What does it matter to the race that Jerry 
is beating his head against the walls of Sing Sing? In 
all the black history of the race, in all the long up- 
struggle, which rubbed off most of our hair, what does 
a little added injustice signify? Nothing. Unless — and 
this is the great chance — unless you can make the race 
realize the stupidity of such injustice. If you could 
make Jerry’s tragedy bite into us like Uncle Tom’s — 
well — then you and he would have earned the right to 
wrap the draperies of your couch about you and all 
that. 

“It’s the same with good results. They are insignif- 
icant! In terms of the race, they matter as little as the 
half hundred slaves Mrs. Stowe helped to escape via 
the underground railroad. Take Tony — this wreck 
you’ve dragged into dry-dock and repaired. It’s 
important to him that you came along at the right time. 
But what does it matter to all the other immigrant 
craft that are trying to find safe anchorage on this side 
of the world? There’s a new Tony launched every 
minute. 

“Seven years you’ve been in the Tombs — ^had your 
nose in the cesspool. What have you learned — not 
just subjective acquisition of information, but what has 


A MAN’S WORLD 


231 


it taught you for the race? Sooner or later, you’ll be- 
gin to teach. You can’t help it. It’s too big for you — 
it will force an outlet. 

“Prisons are a stupidity. Why do we cling to them? 
Natmal viciousness? Innate cruelty? You don’t be- 
lieve that. It’s ignorance! Dense black ignorance! 
Sodden ways of thinking. You’ve seen, you know. 
Well — that’s footless — unless you can make the rest 
of us see and know. One man can’t add much to this 
great racial mind. But if you can do the little, the very 
little, that Beccaria did, that John Howard and Charles 
Reade did — one lightning gleam — these little results 
you are worrying about now will sink into insignificance. 

“You won’t solve the problem of crime. That’s too 
much to expect. What you teach about reform — re- 
forms of judicial procedure, reforms of pofice and 
prisons — won’t interest me much. I know these things 
seem big to you, but it will be mostly out of date be- 
fore it’s off the press. What I will look for is some help 
in understanding the problem. That will be your 
contribution — the judging result of your living. Per- 
haps some youngster, one of the generation to come, 
will read your book and go into the Tombs, see it for 
himself and in two years understand all it has taken you 
ten years to learn. That’s human progress! 

“We must saturate ourselves with the idea of evo- 
lution. Think of ourselves, our little lives, as tiny 
steps in that profound procession. Knowledge is the 
progressive element in life, just as nerve cells are the 
only progressive tissue in om- bodies. We won’t develop 
any more legs as we evolve through the ages ahead of 
us — the change will be in our brains.” 

The conversation rambled off into some by-paths 


232 


A MAN’S WORLD 


which I forget. But it was this same night, I think, 
that he struck the main road of his philosophy, mapped 
out before me his idea of the country the race has yet 
to explore. 

“The impediment to progress,” he said, “is our fool 
idea of finality. It’s funny how humanity has always 
been looking for an absolute, final comt of appeal. 
The king can do no wrong. The pope is infallible. 
God is omniscient! Now we have the age of reason. 
The old gods have been driven from Olympus. And 
in place of Jehovah and Zeus our college professors 
have made a god of truth, the absolute, the final! 
Sooner or later we’ve got to learn that progress — growth 
of any kind — is in exact antithesis to this idea of final- 
ity. 

“A large part of the scientific world and, I suppose, 
ninety-nine per cent of what is called “the enlightened 
public,” believe that Darwinism is the last work in 
natural science. There are a thousand question marks 
strewn about the theory of natural selection. Only 
those biologists, who have sense enough not to accept 
the finality of anything, are trying to answer these 
questions. 

“Socialism is a spectacular example. What did Karl 
Marx do? He stumbled along through the life which 
was given him, doing kind things and mean things 
by the way, all of which is, or ought to be, forgotten. 
The real thing he did — his contribution — ^was to keep 
his eyes open, to look at fife without blinders. In the 
long process of thinking, this is the most important, 
the fundamental thing. And what he saw he pondered 
over, sweated over, prayed atheistical prayers over — 
and then he spoke out fearlessly. The people about him 


A MAN’S WORLD 


233 


were hypnotized by the wonderfully growing indus- 
triahsm of the day. It was going to solve all the ills 
of the race. No one had any responsibihty any more. 
Laissez faire! Virtue and happiness and the next gen- 
eration were automatic. The praise of the machine 
became an enthusiasm, a gospel. Marx had looked at it 
harder than the rest, had seen through its surface a 
glitter. And hke Cassandra he shouted out his fore- 
bodings, careless of whether the world listened or not. 
'It’s a sham,’ he said, ‘this industrialism of yours is 
fundamentally immoral. It bears within itself death 
germs. They are already at work. This thing in which 
you put your trust is already putrid.’ I don’t know 
anything more amazing in the history of the human 
mind than Marx prophecies. Wrong in somd^ details of 
course. He didn’t claim any divine inspiration. But 
those three volumes in German are stupendous. And 
the secret of it is that he turned his penetrating eyes 
on the life about him. He looked! 

“But the socialists of today— are they following 
his example? No, Marx did not believe in finalities; 
they make a finality of him. He sought new knowledge. 
They are defending what is already old, and like every- 
thing old, some of it is wrong now. Marx was a revo- 
lutionist — one of the greatest. The Marxists are con- 
servatives. Think of it. Not an American socialist 
has tried to analyze Wall Street! Instead of scruti- 
nizing the life about them, they spend their time ar- 
guing over his agrarian theory. No country in the 
world offers such glaring examples of industrial in- 
justice as these United States and the books they cir- 
culate are translations from German. Some day they’ll 
wake up — then I’ll join them. 


234 


A MAN’S WORLD 


"The trouble comes from thinking there are finalities 
in life — ultimate truths. We’ve got to get it into our 
heads that truth itself evolves. 

"It’s coming to me stronger and stronger that the 
point of attack ought to be on our ideals of education. 
My God! You quit college at the end of yom freshman 
year and wasted exactly three years less than I did. 
I feel so sure that this is the real issue that I’m losing 
interest in everything else. 

"A system of education which wakes up the human 
mind instead of putting it to sleep! Education which 
begins where it ought to! At the beginning, the 
process of seeing, of looking at life with our own 
eyes — instead of through some professor’s spectacles. 
If, we could only teach the trick of original observa- 
tion! 

"The trouble isn’t so much that we think incorrectly. 
We don’t see straight. I remember our professor used 
to tell us that logic is a coffee-mill. If we put coffee in at 
the top it will come out at the bottom in a more usable 
form. But if we put in dirt — it stays dirt, no matter 
how fine we grind it. And then he switched off to train 
our coffee-mills — a lot of rigamarole about syllogisms, 
the thirteen fallacious ones — perhaps it was fourteen. 
But not a single word about how to distinguish dirt 
from coffee. It’s the original assumptions that need 
questioning. I don’t believe Darwin was a better 
logician than Saint Augustine. But he went out into 
the world and looked. He used observed facts for his 
coffee-mill. Saint Augustine ground up a lot of in- 
coherent beliefs and dirty assumptions. Anyone can 
learn the laws of logic in a three months college comse, 
or in as many weeks from a text-book. But I don’t 


A MAN’S WORLD 


235 


know of any place where they even try to teach original 
observation. 

“Education, everybody says, is the bulwark of 
democracy. And we Americans really want democracy 
in a way the most radical European never dreamed of. 
Yet we are content with our schools! Nobody really 
worries about improving them. We assume that our 
system is the best in the world, perfect. Final! Damn 
finality! I’m not sure that our system isn’t the worst. 
We consistently kill all originality. The minute the kids 
strike school the process begins. ‘This, my child, 
is what you must believe,’ you say. ‘This block’ the 
kindergarten teacher says ‘is red.’ Of course what she 
should say is, ‘What color is this block?’ The college 
professor says to his senior seminar, ‘Goethe is the 
greatest German poet; if you prefer Heine, you are a 
barbarian. Milton’s epics are the pride of English 
letters; if you prefer L’ Allegro, you show your lack of 
culture. Shelley was undoubtedly a great poet, but, 
I regret to say, an incendiary. Of course you must 
read The Ode to the West Wind and the Clouds, but I 
warn you against the Revolt of Islam.’ From grammar 
school to university it is all this business of predigested 
tablets. 

“Just look at the effect this sort of business has 
had on our politics! We Americans are dead. New 
ideas, discussion of fundamental political principles are 
fomenting everywhere but here. A Paris cab-driver 
thinks more about the theory of government than our 
congressman. We Americans sit back — our feet on the 
table — puff out our chests and say ‘complete and ab- 
solute liberty for all time was decreed by the fathers 
in 1789.’ How many men do you know who ever se- 


236 


A MAN’S WORLD 


riously questioned that proposition? How many Ameri- 
cans really believe that it takes ‘eternal vigilance’ to be 
free? No. Our Constitution is the most glorious docu- 
ment penned by man. It’s final — it’s stagnant and 
stinking! 

“If we don’t revolutionize our education, we’ll rot 
or give up democracy. It’s a clear choice. A national 
Tammany Hall and dizzy Roman decadence or Neo- 
aristocracy with restricted suffrage and hare-brained 
experiments in human stock breeding. If we don’t 
learn to educate in a truer way, if we don’t manage to 
kill this folly of finality, it’s a choice between physiolog- 
ical decay and eugenics. 

“I’m getting out of everything else — can’t see any- 
thing but education. No more personal charity, no 
more checks to shoddy philanthropies. All the money 
I can lay my hands on goes into a trust fund to finance 
an educational insurrection. It’s the only revolution 
I’m interested in. 

“I tried to write about it. But — hell — people 
won’t take me seriously. I knew somebody would 
giggle if I talked, so I ground out an article. I found a 
man in the club laughing over it — said it was ‘clever.’ 
Well — I’ve put what I think about it in my will. Per- 
haps they won’t laugh when they read that.” 

As I said I am not sure whether Norman gave me my 
ideas, or whether he voiced conclusions which were 
forming already in my mind. At least I owe him their 
concrete shape. 

My work in the Tombs took on a new visage. I be- 
gan to think of it as something to communicate. I 
went about it with the feeling of a showman or a guide. 
There was always someone at my shoulder, to whom I 


A MAN’S WORLD 


237 


tried to explain the essentials back of the details. The 
routine which had begun to be mechanical was revivi- 
fied. I began thinking out my book. What I wanted 
to do was to draw a picture of the complex phenomena 
of crime and to contrast with it the dead and formal 
simpUcity of bur Penal Code, to show its hopeless in- 
adequacy. I began work on a section devoted to 
"Theft.” From my notes and my daily experience, 
I tried to show the kind of people who steal, the motives 
which drive them to it, the means they develop towards 
their end, petty sneak thieves, swindle promoters, 
bank robbers, pickpockets, fraudulent beggars, de- 
faulting cashiers. The reality of theft is an infinitely 
more tangled thing than one would suppose from read- 
ing the meagre paragraphs in our statutes which deal 
with "Larceny.” The book grew slowly. I felt no 
hurry. Now and then I published sections in the mag- 
azines — "Stories of Real Criminals.” 

Ill 

It was when I was getting close to thirty-five that 
I first saw the name: Suzanne Trevier Martin — at- 
torney and counsellor at law. We had heard rumors 
of women lawyers from the civil courts. But I think 
she was the first to invade the Tombs. It was Tim 
Leery, the doorman, of Part I, who called my attention 
to her. 

"Say,” he greeted me one morning about noon, 
"There’s a fee-male lawyer here today — looking for 
you. And say — she’s a peach!” 

I do not know why I thought he was Joking. I sup- 
pose I shared the comic paper idea that most pro- 
fessional women were pop-eyed and short-haired. 


238 


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Anyhow it was a definite surprise when I caught sight 
of her. Leery was pointing me out to her. 

Yes. I am sure surprise was the chiefest element 
in the impression she made on me. Everything about 
her was different from what I expected of women. She 
was the most matter-of-fact looking person I have ever 
seen — and the most beautiful. I cannot describe her 
way of dressing, all that sticks in my mind is the crisp, 
white collar she wore. Somehow one’s attention cen- 
tered on that clean, orderly bit of linen. There was no 
suggestion of aping man-fashion about her, nor were 
there any frivolous tweedledees nor tweedledums. It 
was all as straightforward as that collar. 

She had a mass of Titian red hair. A complexion 
so deUcate that the sun had freckled it already in early 
spring. The lines of her face were altogether beautiful. 
Her mouth was firm and immobile. Her shifts of mood 
showed only in her eyes. They were always changing 
color, from deep tones of brown to a glowing chestnut 
almost as red as her hair. The way her head balanced 
on her neck, made me want to cheer. It seemed a vic- 
tory for the race, that she — one of us — could carry her 
head so fearlessly^ 

“Here is an introduction,” she said. 

It was a letter from a young lawyer. The junior 
member of his firm, he was sometimes sent into the 
Tombs to defend the servants of their rich clients. 
I had often given him pointers on the practice of our 
courts, which differs materially from that of the civil 
courts. He asked the same courtesies for his friend. 
Miss Martin. 

I felt with some embarrassment the amused stares of 
the crowded corridors. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


239 


“This isn’t a very convenient place to talk,” I said, 
“Let’s go round to Philippe’s and lunch.” 

As we walked downstairs, I sized her up as about 
twenty-five. I noted that the grace of her neck ex- 
tended down her spine, I have never seen a straighter 
back. There was something definitely boyish in the 
way she walked, in her stride and the swing of her 
shoulders. This impression of boyishness was always 
coming and interfering with reaUzation that she was a 
beautiful woman. 

We found a quiet table at Philippe’s and she ex- 
plained her case. She was counsel for the Button-Hole 
Makers’ Union. They were on strike and one of the 
girls had been arrested on the charge of assaulting a 
private policeman. The question at issue invoked the 
legality of picketing. If the girl had been within her 
rights in standing where she did, the watchman, who 
tried to drive her away, was guilty of assault. It was a 
case to fight out in the higher courts. The unions de- 
manded a definite decision. Miss Martin wanted to 
have her client convicted, and still have grounds to 
take it up on appeal. It was simple and I had given 
her the necessary points before we had finished our 
coffee. 

The very first sight of her in the Tombs had stirred 
me, as the first sight of no other woman had ever done. 
It was not so much a desire for personal possession as a 
vague feeling that the man to whom she gave her love 
would be happy above other men. In the back of my 
brain, as I sat talking to her, was a continual question- 
ing. She had said she was a socialist. I saw that she 
had the fearless, open attitude to life, which is the hall- 
mark of the revolutionists. I wondered if she had a 


240 


A MAN’S WORLD 


lover. Was the friend, who had given her the intro- 
duction, the lucky man? What were her theories in such 
matters? 

But if she made a more direct sensuous appeal to me 
than other women, to an even greater degree she seemed 
to ignore the possibility of such ideas being in my mind. 
I have never known even an ugly woman who was less 
coquettish. She was strangely aloof. She made the 
purely business side of our meeting dominate, did not 
seem to realize there might be a personal aspect. The 
way in which she made it quite impossible for me to 
suggest paying for her lunch was typical. She shook 
hands with me firmly, frankly, as a boy would with a 
man who had given him some slight help, and strode 
up the street to her office. I was surprised. 

In and out of the Tombs, she walked for the next few 
weeks. Judge Ryan, before whom she tried her case, 
and who believed that all women should marry and keep 
indoors as soon after eighteen as a man would have them, 
was mightily exercised over her invasion. 

“Damn her soul. Whitman,” he said, “she isn’t a 
woman — she’s just brain and voice. She sits there 
before the court opens and looks like a woman — good- 
looking woman at that — then she gets up on her hind 
legs and talks. Hell! I forget she is a woman — for- 
get she wears skirts. And, so help me God, there aren’t 
a dozen men in the building who know as much law 
as she does. She’s got the goods. That’s the devil of 
it. You can’t snub her. You can’t treat her the way she 
deserves. You want to call her unwomanly and she 
won’t let you remember she’s a woman.” 

She had made Ryan, facing her from the bench, feel 
the same aloofness, she had impressed on me across 


A MAN’S WORLD 


241 


the table at Philippe’s. But if the judge found it im- 
possible to snub her, it was just as impossible, I found, 
to be friendly with her. We had frequent encounters 
in the corridors. I frankly sought them, and she did so 
as frankly — when she wanted some information. Away 
from her, I thought of her as a desirable woman. Face 
to face, she forced me to consider her as a serious 
minded socialist. 

Aside from the details of her case, we had only one 
talk. The second day she was at court she cross- 
questioned me on my politics. I had none. “Why 
not?” she demanded. She had all the narrow-minded 
prejudice which most socialists have towards the mere 
reformer, the believer in palliatives, the spreaders on of 
salve. Did I not realize the futility of such work as 
mine? I was more keenly aware of it than she. Well, 
why did not I go to the root of the matter? Why not 
attack the basic causes? I was not sure what they were. 
She was. Although she had not been in the Tombs as 
many days as I had years, she knew all about it. The 
whole problem of crime sprang from economic malad- 
justment. Socialism would cure it. It was all so 
beautifully simple! I have unspeakable admiration 
for such faith. It is the most wonderful thing in the 
world. But all I can do is to envy it. I cannot 
believe. 

Her aloofness increased noticeably after she had 
sounded the depth of my unbelief. When the case was 
finished, she sought me out to thank me for the very 
real service I had rendered. Despite my intentions 
in the matter, her hand slipped out of mine quicker 
than I wished. I hoped to see her again. She was un- 
certain how soon, if ever, her work would bring her back 


242 


A MAN’S WORLD 


to the Tombs. I suggested that I might call on her. 
She seemed really surprised. 

“Why,” she exclaimed, “thank you. But you know 
I’m very busy. I have five or six regular engagements a 
week — committees and all that. And this strike takes 
what time is left. I am too busy for the social game. 
I’m sorry. But we’ll run into each other again some 
time. Goodbye. No end obliged.” 

It was the snub direct. Her friendship was only for 
those who saw the light. She had no time for outsiders, 
for “mere reformers.” 

She filled more of my mind after she was gone than 
in the few days of our intercom'se. For the first time 
in my life romance laid hold on my imaginings. I am 
not sure whether it was real love or simply wounded 
amour propre. But I dreamed of all sorts of extrava- 
gant ways of winning her esteem and love — generally 
at the cost of my life. I was not nearly unhappy enough 
to want to die, but I got a keen, if somewhat lugubrious 
delight in picturing her kneeling at my bedside, realiz- 
ing at last the mistake she had made in snubbing me — 
repenting it always through a barren, loveless life. 

The memory I held of her was altogether admirable — 
the straight line of her back, the glorious poise of her 
head, the rich brown of eyes, her frank and boyish 
manner. But pride held me back from seeking her out. 
I knew a snub would be the result. 

Once, a month or so later, I passed a street corner 
crowd, under a socialist banner. She was just getting 
up to speak. I walked a block out of my way for fear 
she would see me and think I was trying to renew our 
acquaintance. But I also was busy. Too busy to 
waste time over a phantom, gradually she sank back 


A MAN’S WORLD 


243 


into a vaguer and vaguer might-have-been. A year 
later I ran across her name in the paper in connection 
with some strike. For a day or two her memory flared 
up again. That sentimental spasm I thought was the 
last of her. I was deep in proof-reading. 

IV 

That my book brought recognition from professional 
penologists was a surprise to me. I had written it 
with the intent of interesting laymen. But a German 
psychological journal gave it a long review. It was 
quickly translated into French and Italian. I was made 
contributing editor of “La revue penologique.” Last 
of all the American Prison Society took notice of me 
and chose me as a delegate to the International Con- 
gress at Rome. 

Europe never attracted me, and I doubt if I would 
have gone, except for the urgings of Norman and Ann. 
I was sea-sick for five days, and bored beyond words 
the rest of the way over. It rained so hard the day I 
spent in Naples that I got no good view of Vesuvius. 

Arrived in Rome, I found that they had put down my 
name for the first day’s program, and I spent the time, 
till the congress opened, in my room writing up my 
paper. I had chosen for my subject: “The Need of a 
New Terminology in the Study of Crime.” More and 
more this reform seems imperative to me. The effort 
to express the modern attitude towards crime in the 
old phraseology is like putting new wine in old skins. 
Just as we no longer say that a man is “possessed of the 
devil,” but use such newer words as “paranoia,” 
“paresis” and so forth, we must give up such terms as 
“burglary in the second degree.” It is a remnant 


244 


A MAN’S WORLD 


of mediaeval scholasticism and means nothing today. 
It is a dead concept of an act and gives no account of the 
live human being who is supposed to have committed 
it. “Murder,” the code implies, “is always murder, 
just as oxygen is always oxygen.” But while one atom 
of oxygen is exactly like every other, no two murderers 
are at all alike. Crime is infinitely complex. “Lar- 
ceny” — a fixed and formal term — cannot describe 
the intricate reactions from the varied stimuli of en- 
vironment, which lead a particular bunch of nerve 
cells to steal. We must turn our back on the abstract 
words of the ancient law books and develop a vocabu- 
lary which expresses actualities. 

That first day of the congress, seemed to me the very 
apotheosis of absurd futility. Half a hundred delegates 
from all corners of the world assembled in one of the 
court rooms of the palace of justice. We were supposed 
to be serious, practical men, come together to devise 
means of improving the methods of combating crime. 
We sat for an hour and a half through tiresome, bom- 
bastic exchanges of international greetings. The elec- 
tion of a chairman, of honorary presidents and vice- 
presidents, of a real secretary and a host of honorary 
secretaries took up the rest of the morning. A nation’s 
parliament could have organized in less time and we 
had only come together to exchange ideas, we had no 
power. 

When we convened after lunch, I was called on. 
There were three delegates from England, one from 
Canada and another from the United States. The rest 
had only a long-distance knowledge of English. I have 
rarely felt more uncomfortably foolish than I did, read- 
ing my paper to that uncomprehending audience. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


245 


The first two to discuss my thesis were Germans. 
Neither had completely understood my argument, 
they attacked me with acrimony. The third speaker 
was an Italian, who shook his fist at me. I have not 
the faintest idea what he was talking about. Then 
one of the English delegation, a bishop, got up and said 
that it was well to have a note of humanism in our 
discussion, after all criminals were — or at least had 
been — ^men hke us. As Archbishop Somebody had said 
on seeing a prisoner led out to execution — “There, 
but for the grace of God, go I.” 

Then a Frenchman, with carefully groomed beard 
and equally carefully groomed cynicism, said I was a 
sentimentalist. He told us that he was a “positivist.” 
He referred frequently to Auguste Compte — a phil- 
osopher whom I had up till that moment always re- 
garded very highly. My mawkishness he felt was a 
most regrettable incident in a scientific assembly. 
Criminology unless it could be reduced to an exact 
science like mineralogy or mathematics was no science 
at all. He ended up by telling us that he was glad to 
report that the sentimental objections to corporal 
punishment were rapidly dying out in France and that 
there was every prospect of the cat-o’-nine-tails being 
reintroduced into their prisons in the near future. What 
that had to do with my subject I could not see. 

How to reply to such critics? It was not only the 
difficulty of language. Somehow I was oppressed with 
loneliness. I was a barbarian, an outlandish person 
among them. In their thoughts they were “officials,” 
they were “pillars of society” — what Norman scorn- 
fully called “the best people.” It was a stupid mistake 
which had brought me before them. They knew noth- 


246 


A MAN’S WORLD 


ing about crime, except a jumble of words. They never 
would. 

And so — being weary of soul — I said, that as far 
as I had understood, they were all against me except 
the gentleman from England. I wanted as far as pos- 
sible to repudiate his attitude. I protested against 
the blasphemy of his archbishop. I was no church- 
man, but I could not find heart to blame the Deity 
for our outrageous human injustice. I was sorry that 
he believed in a God so immoral as to exercise special 
acts of grace to keep him and me out of prison. I felt 
that a better motto for prison reform would be — “There 
but for pure luck, go we.” 

This was taken as a witty sally by everyone but the 
English delegates who understood what I said and we 
adjourned to a state reception at the Quirinal; there was 
a dinner afterwards given by the Italian prison society. 
The congress reconvened the next day at two in the 
afternoon. The subject was “Prison Ventilation.” 
I sneaked out and found my way to The Forum. There 
I encountered a congenial soul — a youthful guide who 
had learned to speak English in New York. We sat 
down on a piece of ancient Rome and he told me about 
his adventures in the new world. 

“Ever arrested?” I asked. 

“Twict.” 

“In the Tombs?” 

“Sure,” he said with a broad grin. “Fer a fight.” 

I engaged him for the rest of my stay in Rome. He 
led me to a little restaurant near-by and after supper we 
sat in the very top gallery of the Coliseum and talked 
about Mulberry Square. So I missed the dinner ten- 
dered us by the municipality. 


A- MAN’S WORLD 


247 


The next day the great Lombroso was to discuss head 
measurements. Antonio and I visited the Vatican. 
He was an anti-clericalist and the indecent stories he 
told me about the dead popes, as he showed me their 
tombs in Saint Peter’s were much more vivid than the 
sing-song guide book phrases he used in commenting 
on the wonder and the beauty of the place. He took me 
to supper with his family in a tenement district of 
Rome. So the “sights” I saw were not so much the 
pictixres and the ruins as the souls of the down-trodden 
peasant folk bitter against church and state. I lost a 
chance — undoubtedly — to increase my meagre store 
of “culture,” but I do not regret it. 

My fellow delegate from America was shocked at my 
desertion of the congress. He thought I was in a pet 
over the reception given my paper and said it was 
not decent to stay away. So I went the next day 
and listened to a discussion on the advisability of in- 
troducing drugs into prison diet to reduce unpleasant 
nervous disorders among the inmates. Everyone 
seemed in favor of the proposition, the only opposition 
came from a realization of the expense involved. The 
chairman expressed the hope that some drug might yet 
be discovered which would be effective, and at the 
same time cheap. 

When the congress was finished the delegates were 
taken as guests of the government to visit a model 
prison, recently opened in North Italy. Our inspection 
consisted of a hurried stroll through the cell-blocks 
and a banquet in the warden’s palatial apartments. 
We drank several toasts to members of the royal fam- 
ily and then, someone proposed a bumper to the In- 
ternational Prison Congress. I noticed by chance that 


248 


A MAN’S WORLD 


the bottle, from which a convict waiter filled my glass, 
was labelled, “Lacrimae Christi.” 

“Tears of Christ!” I said to my next neighbor. “It 
would be more fitting to drink this toast of the water 
in which Pilate washed his hands.” 

My neighbor was a Frenchman with a loud laugh — so 
the thoughtless jibe had to be repeated. The English 
delegate seized the opportunity to return my accusa- 
tion of blasphemy. There was considerable angry com- 
ment. It was a regrettable incident, as it did no good. 

The Hungarian government had also invited us to 
visit some of their blue-ribbon prisons. But in the 
railroad station at Milan, where we were waiting to 
take train for Trieste and Budapest, I heard the Chef 
de Gare call the Paris express. It came over me with a 
rush. I could get home a week earlier. Why waste 
more time with these barren old gentlemen? I bolted, 
had just time to rescue my baggage. 

Arrived in Paris in the early morning, I drove at 
once to Cook’s and reserved passage on the first boat 
home. As I was turning away from the steamship desk, 
I had to walk past the window where mail is distributed. 
I do not think I was consciously looking at the crowd 
of men and women who were waiting for letters, in 
fact I remember quite well that I was losing my temper 
over an effort to put a too large envelope into my pocket, 
but suddenly I saw Suzanne Martin’s back. It was 
impossible to mistake it, or the glorious pile of hair 
above her slender neck. 

I walked on, intending to hurry away. But I stopped 
at the door. I picked up one of those highly colored 
tourist pamphlets — I think it was an advertisement of a 
“Tour to Versailles in motor cars” — ^and over the top 


A MAN’S WORLD 


249 


of it I watched Suzanne gradually approach the win- 
dow, get her handful of letters, and sit down in one of 
the easy chairs to read them. 

At last she finished with them and started towards 
the door. I wished that I had not waited, but was 
ashamed to let her see me run away. I became deeply 
interested in the little book. She would have to walk 
right past me but if she did not care to recognize me — 
well — she should not know that I had seen her. 

V 

“Why — hello — Mr. Whitman.” 

It was not till I heard her voice that I realized how 
much it mattered to me, whether she spoke or not. 
Somehow or other we got out of the door onto the 
Avenue de 1’ Opera. 

“Which way are you going?” she asked. 

“Nowhere in particular. May I walk along with 
you?” 

So here I was in Paris walking beside Suzanne. I 
suppose it had been a beautiful day before — it was 
early June, but it had suddenly become resplendent. 
The day had begun to laugh. I found out that she was 
intending to spend several weeks in Paris, so I lied and 
said I also was there for a month. With selfish glee I 
learned that Suzanne was lonely. She was evidently 
glad to have some one to talk to. Afraid that if I did 
not keep busy some other way, I might shout, I launched 
into a whimsical account of the prison congress. This 
carried us as far as a bench in the garden of the Tuil- 
eries. And there some chance word showed her that 
this was my first visit to Paris, that I had arrived hardly 
an hour before we met. 


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“Oh!” she said, jumping up, “Then, the very first 
thing you must do, is to climb the tower of Notre 
Dame. That’s the place to get your first look at Paris.” 

“Allans done” I cried. I would have said the same 
if she had suggested the morgue. 

I remember that, as we rode along, Suzanne pointed 
out various places of interest, but I doubt if my eyes 
went further afield than the gracious hand with which 
she pointed. Then suddenly we turned a corner and 
came out into the place before the cathedral. The 
charm of youth beside me was broken for a moment 
by the wonder of antiquity. How alive the old build- 
ing seems with the spirits of the long dead men who 
built it! They say that Milan Cathedral is also Gothic. 
But my fellow delegate must have stood in my way. 
I had not seen it as for the first time I saw Notre Dame. 

“You can look at the facade afterwards,” Suzanne 
said — her voice breaking the spell. “The important 
thing is to get the view from the top first.” 

The twisting, worn stairs of the North Tower was 
one of the treasures of my memory. A strange im- 
pression — the thick masonry, our twinkling little 
tapers in the darkness, stray wisps of Hugo’s romance 
and of even older stories, the beads of moisture on the 
stones, the chill dank breath of very-long-ago and dom- 
inating it all, Suzanne’s two tiny and very modern tan 
shoes and little glimpses of her stockings. I remember 
the sudden glare of the first balcony. I caught a quick 
view down the river and wanted to stop. But Suzanne, 
who was “personally conducting” this tour, said we 
could climb higher. So we entered the darkness again 
and came at last to the top. 

I could not tell you how Paris looks from the tower 


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251 


of Notre Dame. I only remember how Suzanne looked. 
The stiff chmb had shortened her breath and heightened 
her color. The breeze caught a stray wisp of her hair 
and played delightful tricks with it. And how her eyes 
glowed with enthusiasm. 

“This is my favorite spot on earth,” she said. “It’s 
the very center of civilization. From here you can see 
the birthplace of almost every idea which has benefited 
the race, the battle-fields where every human victory 
was won. See! Over there on the Mont Ste. Genevieve 
is where Abelard shattered mediae valism and commenced 
the reformation. And over there in the Latin Quarter 
is the oldest faculty of medicine in the world. It was 
in one of those houses on the hillside that men dared 
for the first time to study anatomy with a knife. And 
there — further to the west — is where Voltaire hved. 
Nearby is the house of Diderot, where the encycloped- 
ists met to free the human mind. And here — on the 
other side of the river — is the Palais Royal. See the 
green clump of trees. Under one of them Camille 
Desmoulins jumped upon a chair and made the speech 
which overthrew the Bastille. And there — see the 
gold statue of victory above the housetops — that’s all 
there is left of the grim old fortress. And so it goes. 
All the history of man’s emancipation spread out before 
you in brick and mortar.” 

How lifeless it sounds now, as I write down the 
ghosts of her words which haunt my memory! But 
how wonderfully alive they sounded that dazzhng sum- 
mer morning — Paris spread out at our feet — we two 
alone on the top of the world! Even then her words 
might have seemed dead things, if they had not been 
illumined by her vibrant beauty, by the glorious faith 


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and enthusiasm within her. All this history was vitally 
alive to her. So had passed the first acts in the great 
drama of progress. And she saw the last act — the final 
consummation of universal brotherhood — as something 
near indeed, compared to the long centuries since 
Abelard had rung up the curtain. We are always at- 
tracted by what we lack and her faith threw new chains 
about me. 

A swarm of German tourists broke in upon us, and to 
escape them we went down to lunch. At this second 
meal with her she told me something of her life. She had 
been bred to the faith. Her mother, a Frenchwoman, 
had married an American. Suzanne had been born in 
New York. But her three uncles had been involved 
in the Communard revolt of 1871. One had died on 
the barricade. The other two had been sent to New 
Caledonia. The younger, living through the horrors 
of that Penal Colony, had escaped to America and had 
brought the shattered remnant of his life to his sister’s 
home. He had been the mentor of Suzanne’s child- 
hood. 

Six months before I encountered her in Paris, she 
had fallen sick from overwork, and had come to rela- 
tives in Southern France to regain her strength. Re- 
covered now, she was spending the last month of her 
vacation sight-seeing in Paris, She asked me where 
I was stopping, which reminded me that I had not yet 
secured a place to sleep. I blamed it on her for having 
taken me off to the cathedral when I should have been 
looking up a hotel. 

“Why waste money on a hotel?” she asked. “If 
you’re going to be here several weeks a pension is lots 
cheaper.” 


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253 


She told me of the place where she was staying over 
on the Left Bank. There were vacant rooms. I dashed 
away to cancel my sailing, to collect my baggage and, 
before I had time to reahze my good fortune, I was in- 
stalled under the same roof with her. My memory 
of the next few days is a jumble of Suzanne in the Mus6e 
Carnavelet, Suzanne in the Luxembourg, Suzanne in 
the Place de la Concorde, pointing out where they 
had guillotined the king, Suzanne under the dome 
of Les Invalides, denouncing Napoleon and all his 
ways. 

Coming back from Versailles one evening, I asked 
her if she ever thought of living permanently in France. 

“No,” she said emphatically. “I love France, but I 
don’t like the French. The men don’t know how to 
treat a woman seriously. They always talk love.” 

“I envy them the sang froid with which they express 
their feelings.” 

Suzanne’s eyes shot fire. Displaying all her storm 
signals, she flared out into a denunciation of such flip- 
pancy. This business of telling a woman at first sight 
that she made your head swim, disgusted her. This 
continual harping on sex, seemed nasty. “Why can’t 
men and women have decent, straightforward friend- 
ships?” she demanded. She liked men, liked their 
point of view, liked their talk and comradeship. But 
Frenchmen could not think seriously if a woman was in 
sight. Friendship was impossible with them. 

“It’s pretty uncertain with any men, isn’t it?” I 
asked. 

“Well. Anyhow American men are better. I’ve had 
some delightful men friends at home.” 

“And did the friendships last?” I insisted. 


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“Well, no.” She was wonderfully honest with her- 
self. “Why is it? It wasn’t my fault.” 

“Probably nobody’s fault,” I said. “Just the grim 
old law of nature. You don’t blame the sun for rising. 
You can’t blame a man for ” 

“Oh, don’t you begin it,” she interrupted. “I give 
you fair warning.” 

We sat glum on opposite seats until the train reached 
Paris. 

“Oh, bother!” she said, as we got out. “What’s 
the use of moping? Let’s be friends. Just good friends.” 

She held out her hand so enticingly I could not help 
grasping it. 

“Honest Injun,” she said. “No cheating? Cross 
your heart to die.” 

So I was committed to a platonic relation which 
even at the first I knew to be unstable. 

The next morning, as though to prove the firmer 
basis of our friendship, she told me that she was ex- 
pecting two comrades, a Mr. and Mrs. Long, who were 
then in Germany, to arrive in Paris in a few days. They 
were planning a tramp through Normandy — to take in 
the cathedrals. Would I join them? We spent the 
afternoon over a road map of North-western France, 
plotting an itinerary. 

And then, two days before we expected to start, 
came a telegram from the Longs. They were called 
home suddenly, were sailing direct from Hamburg. 

“Let’s go, anyhow,” I said. “We can put up the 
brother and sister game. These French don’t know 
whether American brothers and sisters ought to look 
alike or not. Anyhow, what does it matter what any- 
body thinks?” 


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255 


Well. We had bought our rucksacs. The trip was 
planned. All its promises of pleasmes and adventmes 
had taken hold on both of us. She hesitated. I be- 
came eloquent. After a few minutes she broke out — 
evidently not having listened to me. 

“Would you keep your word? — Yes — I believe you 
would. I’ll go if you promise me to — well — not to get 
sentimental — really treat me like a sister.” 

“Isn’t there any time limit on the promise? Am I to 
bind myself to a fraternal regard till death us do part? 
I don’t approve of such vows.” 

“You’re either stupid or trying to be funny,” she 
snapped. “You propose that we go alone on a tramp- 
ing trip. You could make it miserably uncomfortable — 
spoil it all. I won’t start unless you promise not to. 
That’s simple.” 

“Well,” I said. “Give and take. I’ll promise not' to 
get sentimental, if you’ll promise not to talk socialism. 
Agreed? We’ll draw up a contract — a treaty of peace.” 

And in spite of her laughing protests that I was a 
fool, I drew it up in form. Suzanne, Party of the First 
Part, Arnold, Party of the Second Part, do hereby 
agree, covenant, and pledge themselves not to talk 
sentiment nor sociology during the hereinafter to be 
described trip. . . . 

So it was ordained. We started the next morning — by 
train to St. Germain-en-Laye. 

VI 

One of my treasures is a worn road map of North- 
western France. Starting from Paris, a line traces our 
intended course, down the Seine to Rouen, across 
country to Calais. It is a clear line. I had a ruler 


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to work with, and the map was laid out on the marble 
top of a table in the little Cafe de la Rotonde. Also 
starting from Paris is another line, which shows the 
path we did follow. It is less clearly drawn, traced 
for the most part on a book balanced on my knee. 
Stars mark the places where we stopped, at night. 
From St. Germain-en-Laye, we doubled back to St. 
Denis, then a tangent off to Amiens, a new angle to 
Rheims. It stops abruptly at Moret-sur-Loing. 

I can command no literary form to do justice to that 
Odyssey — it led me unto those high mountains from 
which one can see the wondrous land of love. 

What did we do? I remember hours on end when we 
trudged along with scarcely a word. I remember 
running a race with her through the forest of Saint 
Germain. I remember a noontime under the great 
elm in the Jardin of a village caf6. There was delect- 
able omelette and Madame la patronne chattered 
amiably about her children and chickens and the 
iniquitous new tax on cider. I remember the wonder 
of those century old windows at Rheims and Suzanne’s 
talk of the Pucelle. I remember trying to teach her to 
throw stones and her vexation when I laughingly told 
her she could never learn to do it like a man. And here 
and there along our route, I remember little corners 
of the Elysian Fields where we rested awhile and talked. 
Suzanne had found me unappreciative of Browning. 
Often by the wayside she would take a little volume 
of his verse out of her rucksac and make me listen. 
The first poem to charm me was “Cleon.” It led us 
far afield into a discussion of the meaning of life and 
Suzanne — ^to make more clear Browning’s preference 
for the man who lives over the man who writes about 


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257 


life — ^read “The Last Ride Together.” Her voice 
faltered once — she realized I think how near it came 
to the forbidden subject — but she thought better to 
read on. After that I belonged to Browning. 

Those verses seemed written to express our outing. 
Whether she looked beyond our walk or not I do not 
know. I did not. What would happen when our pil- 
grimage was over I did not ask. The present was too 
dizzyingly joyful to question the future. 

At last we came to Moret on the border of the great 
forest of Fontainebleau. It had been our intention to 
push on and sleep at Barbizon, but we had loitered by 
the way, and at the little Hotel de la Palette, they told 
us the road was too long for an afternoon’s comfort. 
So there we stopped, to stroll away some hours in the 
forest and get an early start in the morning. 

They gave us two garret rooms, for the hotel was 
crowded with art students and the better part was 
filled. I recall how the bare walls were covered with 
sketches and caricatures. There was a particularly 
bizarre sunset painted on the door between our 
rooms. 

Lunch finished, we started for the forest. We came 
presently to a hill-top, with an outlook over the ocean of 
tree-tops, the gray donjon keep of Moret to the north. 
Suzanne as was her custom, threw herself face down in 
the long grass. I seem to hold no sharper memory of 
her than in this pose. I sat beside her, admiring. Sud- 
denly she looked up. 

“Tomorrow night Barbizon,” she said, “the next 
day Paris and our jaunt is over.” 

She looked off down a long vista between the trees. 
I do not know what she saw there. But no matter 


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which way I looked, I saw a cloud of tiny bits of paper, 
fluttering into a waste-paper basket. 

“And then,” I said, “a certain iniquitous treaty of 
peace will be torn into shreds.” 

My pipe had burned out before she spoke again. 
Her words when they did come were utterly foreign 
to my dreaming. 

“Why did you write that kind of a book?” 

There was earnest condemnation in her voice. To 
gain time, I asked. 

“You don’t like it?” 

“Of course not. It’s insincere.” 

I filled my pipe before I took up the challenge. 

“You’ll have to make your bill of indictment more 
detailed. What’s insincere about it?” 

“You know as well as I do.” 

Never in any of our talks did she give me so vivid an 
impression of earnestness. With a sudden twist she sat 
up and faced me. 

“It’s cynical. There are two parts to the book — ex- 
position and conclusions. The conclusions are pitiable. 
You suggest a program of reforms in the judicial and 
penal system. And they are petty — if they were all 
accepted, it wouldn’t solve the problem of crime. You 
imply one of two things, either that these reforms would 
solve the problem, which they wouldn’t, or that the 
problem is insoluble, which it isn’t.” 

“Count one,” I said. “Pleading deferred.” 

“And then — this is worse — you know there is no 
more chance of these reforms being granted under our 
present system, than of arithmetic being reformed to 
make two and two five.” 

“Count two. Not guilty.” 


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269 


“ No Jury would acquit you on it. But there’s a third 
count — perhaps the worst of all. The book is horribly 
superficial. Hidden away in your preface you mention 
the fact that the worst crimes against society are not 
mentioned in the code. You gently hint that some 
Wall Street transactions are larcenous, even if they are 
not illegal. All hidden in your preface!” 

“That’s entirely unfair,” I protested. “You are 
quarrehng with me over a definition. My book deals 
with the phenomena of the criminal courts. I have no 
business with what you or the newspapers call crime. 
If I wanted my work to be scientific I had to get a sharp 
definition. And I said that crime consists of acts for- 
bidden by the legislature. I pointed out that it is 
an arbitrary conception, which is always changing. 
Some things — like kissing your wife on the Sabbath 
day — are no longer criminal and some things — like 
these Wall Street transactions — probably will be crimes 
tomorrow. Your third count is not against me but 
against the ‘Scientific Method.’” 

“ Tommyrot ! ” she retorted. “You try to evade a big 
human truth by a scientific pretext. You know that 
ninety per cent of the criminal law, just as ninety- 
nine per cent of the civil law, is an effort to make 
people recognize property relations which are basically 
unjust. If our economic relations were right it would 
eliminate ninety per cent of crime. Aud justice — 
socialism — ^would do more, it would result in healthier, 
nobler personalities and wipe out the other ten per cent. 
There’s the crux of the problem of crime and you dodge 
it. 

“You have a chapter on prostitution. It’s splendid, 
the best I’ve seen — ^where you describe present con- 


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ditions. But the conclusions are — well — sickening. 
Do you really think that taking the poor women’s 
finger prints will help? Of course you don’t! It’s all 
wrapped up in the great injustice which underlies all 
life. You come right up to the point — you say that most 
prostitution comes because the daughters of the poor 
have no other alternative but the sweatshop — and then 
you shut your mouth Uke a fool or a coward. 

“Your book might have been wonderful — a big con- 
tribution. Oh, why didn’t you? It’s only half-hearted — 
insincere!” 

I cannot recall my defense. I tried to make her see 
how we came at the problem from the opposite poles, 
how her point of departure was an ideal social organ- 
ization, while I started from the world as it is, how she 
spoke in terms of the absolute, and I thought only of 
relative values, how she saw an abiding truth back of life 
and I believed in an all-pervading change. We fought 
it out bitterly — with ungloved words — all the after- 
noon. Neither convinced the other, but I think I 
persuaded her of my sincerity, almost persuaded her 
that “narrow” was not the best word to express my 
outlook — ^that “different” was juster. The sun was 
down in the tree-tops when at last she brought the ar- 
gument to a close. 

“We’ll never agree. Our points of view are miles 
apart.” 

“But that,” I said, “need make no difference, so 
long as we are honest to each other — and to our- 
selves.” 

“I’m not sure about that,” she said. “I must think 
it out.” 

She stretched out on the grass again and began to 


A MAN’S WORLD 


261 


poke a straw into an ant-hole. I sat back and smoked 
and blessed the gods who had moulded so perfect a back. 
Then she looked at her watch and jumped up. 

“Do you realize, Suzanne, that you have violated 
the treaty? You’ve talked sociology and socialism. 
Now — I’m free. . . .” 

“Oh! Please don’t!” she interrupted. “Not now. 
We must hurry to dinner.” 

I got up laughing and we walked in silence, between 
the great trees, in the falhng dusk, back to the Hotel 
de la Palette. The joviality of that troupe of young 
artists forced us to talk of trivial things. After supper 
we stood for a moment in the doorway. Behind us was 
noisy gayety, before us the full moon illumined the gray 
walls of the citadel, shone enticingly on a quiet reach 
of the river. 

“Come,” I said. “Let’s go down to the bridge — the 
water will be gorgeous in this Ught.” 

For a moment she hung back reluctantly; then sud- 
denly consented. But in the village, she wasted much 
time looking for the house where Napoleon had slept 
in hiding on his return from Elba. When we came at 
last to the bridge she clambered up on the parapet. 
I leaned against it beside her. The light on the river 
was gorgeous. Although there was no wind for us to 
feel, the great clouds overhead were driven about like 
rudderless ships in a tempest. For a moment the moon 
would be hidden, leaving us in utter darkness, the next 
it would break out, its glory bringing to life all the de- 
tails of the picturesque old houses by the riverside. 
Suzanne made one or two barren attempts at conver- 
sation. At last I plunged into the real business of the 
moment. 


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“Of course,” I began, “if you really wish it, I will 
postpone this till we get to Paris.” 

There was a perceptible tightening of her muscles — a 
bracing. But she did not speak. 

If I was eloquent that night, persuasive, it was be- 
cause I did not plead for myself, but for love. It is 
sometimes said that love is egoistic, subjective, to me 
it seems the most objective thing in the world. It 
is — at its grandest — I think, a complete surrender to the 
ultimate bigness of life. Without love we have noth- 
ing to fight for except our little personalities, no better 
occupation than to magnify our individuality. Love 
shows us bigger things. At least it was this I tried to 
tell Suzanne. She had looked on love as a disturbing 
element in life. I tried to show it to her as the goal, 
the apotheosis of life. 

It seems to me, as I look back on it now, that I was 
hardly thinking of Suzanne — not at all of my desire 
for her. I was talking to something further away than 
she, perhaps to the moon. I was trying desperately 
to formulate a faith — to give voice to a belief. 

And then she laid her hand on mine— and I forgot 
the moon. I saw only the glory of her face, different 
from what I had ever seen it. It was paler than usual 
and dreamy. It seemed surprisingly near to me. When 
I kissed her, she did not turn away. 

Suddenly it rained. 

Much of my life has hinged on just such stupid, 
ludicrous chances. It poured — soaking and cold. It 
was a serious matter for us. We were traveling light, 
with nothing but our rucksacs nearer than Paris, 
no outer clothes except those we wore. Although we 
ran all the way we were drenched to the skin before 


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we reached the hotel. The rain stopped as abruptly 
as it had commenced. We were too breathless to talk 
as we clambered up the stairs to our garret rooms. 

After a hard rub, dry underclothes and pajamas, I 
wrapped myself in a blanket and lit my pipe. Through 
the thin partition I could hear Suzanne giving directions 
to the bonne to dry her clothes by the kitchen fire. Then 
her bed creaked. From the cafe downstairs came sounds 
of riotous mirth. Our talk had been so inconclusive. 

“Suzanne,” I said, knocking on the door between our 
rooms. “May I come in? Please. It’s awfully im- 
portant.” 

There was no answer and I opened the door. The 
moon, having escaped from the clouds, shone in through 
the mansard window, full on her bed, painting her hair 
a richer red than usual. I must have been a weird sight, 
with that blanket wrapped about my shoulders. But 
she did not smile. I can find no word to name her ex- 
pression, unless wonder will do. There was a suggestion 
of the amazed face of a sleepwalker. Instinctively I 
knew that she would not repulse me. That moment 
she was mine for the taking. But I did not desire what a 
man can “take” from a woman. I wanted her to give. 

I sat on the foot of the bed and tried to talk her 
into the mood I hungered for. It was not self-restraint 
on my part. I was not conscious of passion. What I 
wanted seemed finer and grander. If she had reached 
out her hand to me, all my pent up desires would have 
exploded. If she had tried to send me away, it might 
have inflamed me. If she had spoken — I do not re- 
member a word. She lay there as one in a dream. There 
was a strange, dazed look in her eyes, perhaps it was 
awed expectancy. I did not read it so. 


264 


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Hoping to wake her, I kissed her hands and her fore- 
head. The great coil of her hair moved in my hands like 
a thing alive. Its fragrance dizzied me. Fearful of 
intoxication, I went apart for a moment by the window, 
looked out at the sinking moon, until my head was clear 
again. I came back and knelt by her bed. 

“Suzanne. What I want is not a thing for the night, 
not a thing of moonlight and shadows. What I want 
must be done by day in the great open air — at high 
noon — for all time and whatever comes after. To- 
morrow in the blaze of the sun. . . .” 

I could not say what was in my heart. The last rays 
of the moon touched the profile of her face so glowingly 
that suddenly I wanted to pray. 

“Oh, Suzanne, I wish that we believed in a God — ^we 
two. So I could pray his blessing on you — on us.” 

Then I kissed her on the lips and went away. 

The hours I spent in my window that night were I 
suppose the nearest I ever got to Heaven. It seemed 
that at last my torturing doubts were over, that I had 
read in the Divine Revelation, that the way, the truth 
and the light had been made plain to me. For the sec- 
ond time in my life I had the assurance of salvation. 

Just as the rim of the sun came up over the eastern 
hills, I heard her get out of bed, heard the sound of her 
bare feet coming towards the door. I jumped down 
from my seat in the window. My dream was fulfilled — 
she was coming to me in the dawn. 

The door opened barely an inch. Her voice seemed 
like that of a stranger. 

“Arnold. Please go down in the kitchen and get my 
clothes.” 

I was ready to open my veins for her and she asked 


A MAN’S WORLD 


265 


me to walk downstairs and bring her a skirt and blouse 
and shoes. 

“Don’t stand there like an idiot,” the strange voice 
said. “I want my clothes.” 

Well — somehow I found the clothes and brought 
them back. She took them in hastily through the door, 
closed it in my face — locked it. I think the grating 
of the bolt in the lock was the thing I first realized 
clearly. She was afraid I would force myself on her. 
We were utter strangers, she did not know me at all. 

Once in a strike riot I saw a man hit between the 
eyes with a brick. It must have knocked him senseless 
at once, but he finished the sentence he was shouting, 
stooped down to pick up a stone, stopped as though 
he had thought of something, sat down on the curb 
in a daze — ^it must have been a full half minute before 
he groaned and slumped over inert. 

After Suzanne drove the bolt of her door through the 
dream, I got dressed and sat down dumbly to wait. 
I heard her moving about her room, heard her putting 
on her shoes — I remember thinking that as they had 
been wet, they must be stiff this morning — then she 
unlocked and opened the door. 

“Arnold,” she said in that constrained voice I did 
not know. “I’ve got to go away — I want to be alone. 
There’s a train for Paris in a few minutes.” 

I suppose I made some movement as if to follow her. 

“ No. Don’t you come. I’ve got to think things out 
by myself. I’ve got to ” — the strained tone in her voice 
was desperate, almost hysterical — “Let me go alone. 
I’ll write to you — Cook’s. I’m. . . .” 

She turned without a word of good-bye and I heard 
her footsteps on the stairs of the still quiet house. And 


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presently, perhaps fifteen minutes, perhaps half an hour, 
I heard the whistle of a train. 

VII 

After a while I “ came to.” I went into her room and 
looked about it. In her haste to be gone she had for- 
gotten her rucksac, it lay there in plain sight on the 
tumbled bed. I went downstairs and drank some coffee 
and paid the bill. I remember a foolish desire to cry 
when I realized that I must pay for both of us. In all 
the trip she had scrupulously insisted in attending to 
her share. With only our two bags for company I went 
up to Paris. She had taken her baggage from the 
'pension an hour before I arrived, she had left no ad- 
dress. I spent most of my time in the garden of the 
Tuileries, going every hour or so to Cook’s in quest 
of the letter she had promised. There were times 
when I hoped she would come back, when it seemed 
impossible that I should not find her again, sometimes 
I despaired. But mostly it was just a dull, stunned 
pain, which was neither hope nor despair. After three 
days the letter came. It was postmarked Le Havre. 
“Dear friend Arnold, 

“It has taken me longer than I had thought to be 
sure of myself. I cannot marry you. It has never 
been hard for me to say this before. It is hard now. 
I know how much it will hurt you. And I care more 
than I ever did before. More, I think, than I ever will 
care again. For I can imagine no finer way of being 
loved than your way. 

“If it were not for the pain it has cost you — I would 
be glad of the chance which threw us together in Paris. 
The days which followed were the most joyous I have 


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267 


ever known — ^almost the only ones. I have not found 
life a happy business. Surely you won’t, I doubt if 
anyone does, realize how sad the world seems to me. 
But somehow, out of the overwhelming misery about 
us, you helped me to escape awhile, helped me to 
snatch some of ‘the rarely coming spirit of delight.’ 
They were perfect — those never-to-be-forgotten days 
on the open road. 

“I can’t — even after all this thinking, and I have 
thought of nothing else — ^understand clearly, what 
happened at Moret. When you began to talk love to 
me — well — it was the first time in my life, I did not 
want to run away. We all have our woman’s dream 
hidden somewhere within us. I don’t remember what 
you said to me there on the bridge but suddenly my 
dream came big. Love seemed something I had al- 
ways been waiting for. I kept asking myself ‘can this 
at last be love’ — and because I did not want to run 
away I thought it was. 

“When you came to my room I was drunk with the 
dream. That you did not take advantage of my be- 
wilderment — ^well — that’s what I meant when I said 
I could think of no finer love than what you have given 
me. I could not have reproached you if you had. God 
knows what it would have meant. It might have turned 
the balance, I might have loved you — in a way. But 
it would not have been you, and it would not have 
been what you wanted. 

“When you went away, I began to recall your 
words — I had scarcely heard them — and then I real- 
ized what you wanted. It seemed very beautiful to 
me and — ^will you believe it — I wanted to give it to 
you, be it for you. But as the hours slipped by the 


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fear grew that I could not, grew to certainty. And I 
was afraid that if I stayed, I would cheat you. And 
so, in fear, I ran away. 

“I know I must have seemed very cruel to you that 
morning. And I am writing all this in the hope that 
you will understand that I was harsh because I was 
afraid, it was the cruelty of weakness. I wanted to 
put my arms about you and cry. You will see that it 
was better that I did not. For now — ^with a cool 
head — ^it is very clear to me, not only that I could not 
be to you what you wish, but that at bottom I do not 
want to. I do not love you. 

“I would like to make this sound less brutal, but 
it is true. It’s not only in regard to socialism that our 
view-points are miles apart, but also in this matter of 
love. 

“The porter is calling the ’bus for my steamer. I 
must stop or miss the tender. It is just as well. If I 
have not shown you in these few pages what I feel, 
I could not in twice as many.” 

I was not man enough to take my medicine quietly. 
The letter jerked me out of my lethargy, threw me 
into a rage, the worst mood of my life. I cursed Su- 
zanne, cursed love, cursed Europe. I engaged passage 
on the first boat home. I took along Suzanne’s ruck- 
sac with the intention of having its contents laundered 
and returning it to her with a flippant, insulting note. 
I occupied most of the time till the boat sailed, on its 
composition. On board I drank hoggishly, gambled 
recklessly — and as such things often go — ^won heavily. 

But the last night out, anchored off quarantine, the 
fury and the folly left me. After all I had been making 
an amazing tempest in a teapot. What did it matter 


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whether my love affair went straight or crooked? I 
felt so much the spoiled child, that I was ashamed to 
look up at the eternal, patient stars. After the vague 
open spaces of the sea, the crowded harbor, the distant 
glow and hum of the great city, seemed real indeed. 
A flare of rockets shot up from Coney Island, dazzled 
a moment and went out. I laughed. The lower lights 
along the shore were not so brilliant — but abiding. 

I leaned over the rail and strained my eyes towards 
the city. And it seemed as if life came to me through 
the night as a thing which one might hold in the hand 
and study. 

The Tombs and all its people, corrupt judges and up- 
right criminals. In a few days I would drop back into 
the rut among them. What had become of Sammy 
Swartz? A pick-pocket of parts, he had, when I left, 
been virtuously scrubbing floors in an office build- 
ing — a deadly grind, compared to the dash and ad- 
venture of his old life. What held him to it? Was 
it only fear of prison or some vague reaching out for 
rectitude? Was he still “on the square” or had he 
gone back to the “graft?” 

The Teepee, Norman, Nina and little Marie. What 
were they doing? Probably wondering when I would 
return — planning some fete. My questionings shot 
back to the old home in Tennessee. The Father and 
Margot — ^what were they doing, what had been done to 
them? And Ann? I would have to hurt her in the 
morning, with my news. Life had driven a wedge in 
between us. 

And Suzanne? She was somewhere in the city. I 
pictmed her in council with her comrades in some 
grimy committee room, some tenement parlor — the 


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light of the glorious vision in their eyes — planning the 
great reconstruction, plotting the coronation of justice. 
She had turned her back on the love I offered that some 
greater love might be made manifest. It seemed to 
me wrong. But right or wrong, I loved her better that 
night than ever before. It was as though a comet had 
become a fixed star. 

And I was sorry for her — while admiring. Like all 
the rest of us, she was caught in the vast spider web of 
life, beating her wings to pieces in the divine effort to 
reach the light. All the people I could think of seemed 
in the same plight — admirable and pitiable. Is not 
this immense, spawning, struggling family of ours 
as much alike in the uncertainty of life as in the cer- 
tainty of death? 

Once ashore, I called up Ann on the telephone. Her 
laboratory had been moved into the city, and so we 
could arrange to lunch together. I was glad of the 
public restaurant, I would have found it harder to 
tell her about Suzanne, if we had been alone. When 
once Ann understood, she made it as easy for me as 
possible. 

“And so," she said at last as we reached the entrance 
to her laboratory, “you won’t be coming out to Crom- 
ley?" 

“I ViTould be a decidedly glum guest, I’m afraid.’’ 

She stood for a moment on the step, her brows 
puckered. 

“Well,’’ she said, “If you really want her — ^go after 
her. Hit her on the head and drag her to your cave. 
Oh, I know. I’m too matter of fact and all that. But 
it’s the way to get her — beat her a little.” 

“I had my chance to do that,” I said, “and couldn’t. 


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271 


Perhaps you’re right — but I love her a bit too much. I 
shan’t go after her.” 

Ann sniffed. 

“If I was a man, I’d go after what I wanted.” Then 
her eyes softened. “But I’m only a woman. All I 
can do is to tell you — you’re always welcome at Crom- 
ley.” 

She turned and ran up the steps to her laboratory. 

In this conversation I realized the basic difference 
between Ann’s point of view and mine, more clearly 
than before. Her philosophy taught her to be, if not 
satisfied, at least content, with half things. If she 
could not get just what she wanted, nor all of it, she 
tried to be happy with what was available. Doubt- 
less she found life better worth living than I did. But 
such an attitude towards Suzanne would have seemed 
to me a desecration. Perhaps if I had sought her out, 
argued with her, tried to dominate her will — tried 
figmatively to “beat her a little” — I might have per- 
suaded her to marry me. Perhaps. But what I might 
have won in this way, would not only have been less 
than what I wanted, but something quite different. 

It had taken no “persuading” to make me love 
Suzanne. I had seen numberless women, had met, I 
suppose, several thousands. Many I had known longer 
than Suzanne. But she stood out from the rest, not 
as “another” woman, not as a more beautiful, or 
cleverer or more earnest woman — although she was all 
these — but as something quite different — ^my woman. 
If she did not recognize me, in the same sudden, un- 
arguable way as her man, there was nothing I could do 
about it. She did not. 

The wise man of Israel said that the way of a man 


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with a maid is past all finding out. It would be traer 
to say that the ways of men with maidens are too varied 
and numerous for any classifying. My way was per- 
haps insane. Very likely I was asking of life more than 
is granted to mortals. But that is small comfort. 

Perhaps Suzanne did love me and had, in running 
away, obeyed some age-old, ineradicable instinct of her 
sex. It is possible that she mourned because I did not 
play the venerable game of pursuit. Perhaps if I had 
taken advantage of the hour when she was wholly mine, 
it might have “turned the balance.” I might have 
entered into the glory. I do not understand the forces 
of life which rule our mating. But one thing I know — I 
was not in love with any Suzanne who could have been 
“persuaded.” 

I sat for some time on a bench in Union Square, 
thinking this out, after I left Ann. I had a strange re- 
luctance to plunge back into the old fife. I remember 
watching with envy two tramps who sat in contem- 
plative silence on a bench opposite me. I was tempted 
to wander away, out of the world of responsibilities, 
out into that strange land where nothing matters. 
There are two sorts of wanderlust; the one which 
pushes the feet and the one which pushes the spirit. 
But at last I shook this cowardly lassitude from me and 
walked downtown to the Teepee. 

Nina threw her arms about my neck. Norman 
pounded me on the back, the little lassie Marie kissed 
me shyly, and Guiseppe hobbled in from the kitchen 
to complete the welcome. While they were still storm- 
ing me with questions, Norman went back to his work. 
He had a large sheet of drawing paper thumbtacked 
to the table and was sketching an advertisement for a 


A MAN’S WORLD 


273 


new brand of pickles. When the rest of them disap- 
peared to kill the fatted calf, he put a hand on my 
shoulder and looked me over carefully. 

“Been on the rocks?” he said. 

I had not realized that it showed. I nodded assent. 

He laid on a dash of crimson alongside some glaring 
green. 

“Isn’t it fierce?” he said. “They wouldn’t hang this 
sort of thing in the Louvre but it’s what makes the 
public buy.” He squinted at it ruefully — “This love 
business is beyond me. Who would think that I could 
stumble on Nina where I did? You know that song of 
Euripides. 

* This Cyprian 

Is a thousand, thousand things 
She brings more joy than any God, 

She brings 

More woe. Oh may it be 
An hour of mercy when 
She looks at me.’ 

I’d given the whole matter up in disgust — and it was 
solved for me. — Say. I need to work in a Uttle raw blue 
here. Green pickles, red pepper, blue — oh yes — a blue 
label on the bottle. Sweet! isn’t it? 

“You know sometimes I think we are all wrong try- 
ing to join brains. You wouldn’t call Nina exactly 
my intellectual equal, but I don’t know any chap 
married to a college graduate who’s got anything on 
me. I’ll put up Marie against any highbrow offspring.” 

He pulled out the tacks and set his sketch up on the 
mantel-piece and walked across the room to get the 
effect. He jerked his head, gestured with his hand and 


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his lips moved as though he were arguing with it. He 
pinned it down again and began putting in the lettering. 

“Of comse,” he took up the thread of his thoughts, 
“there are people who say that it isn’t marriage at all, 
that I’ve just legalized my mistress. But I’ve seen a 
lot of people striving, breaking their necks, for some- 
thing they’d call finer, more spiritual — and getting 
nothing at all. I know I’m happier than most. I’m 
satisfied with my luck. That’s the point. I can’t 
call it anything but luck — By the way. There’s a pile 
of letters for you.” 

And so I slipped back in the rut. In the Tombs I 
sought out new duties, tried to lose myself — forget the 
mess I had made of things — in work. Nina and Nor- 
man stood beside me in those days with fine sweet 
loyalty. They asked no questions, but seemed to 
know what was wrong. Always I felt myself in the 
midst of a conspiracy of cheer. It was during these 
dreary months that I first began to like children. 
Marie’s prattle, after the gloom and weariness of the 
Tombs, was bright indeed. 

I know nothing more beautiful than the sight of a 
little child’s soul gradually taking shape. The memory 
of my own lonely, loveless childhood has given me, I 
suppose, a special insight into the problems of the 
youngsters. The fact that I succeeded in gaining this 
little girl’s love and confidence has compensated me 
for many things which I have missed. 

VIII 

Shortly after my return from Europe, I came into 
communication again with my family. First it was a 
letter from the Father. He regretted that so many 


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276 


years had passed without hearing from me. Knowing 
him as I did, I recognized in this a real apology for 
having tried to starve me into obedience. He had read 
my book with great pleasure and had been especially 
proud to learn that I had been chosen to represent our 
nation abroad. Then there was a little news of the 
village — a list of those who had died and been born and 
married. Oliver, he wrote, had recently been called to 
a pastorate in New York City. He gave me his address 
so that I might call. And he ended with the hope that I 
had conquered the doubts which had troubled my youth 
and won to the joy of religious peace. 

It was a hard letter to answer. I had no more of the 
bitterness I once felt towards him. I wanted very 
much to give him news which would cheer him. And 
yet I knew that the one question which seemed really 
important to him — in regard to my religious beliefs — I 
could not answer frankly without giving him pain. 
I did the best I could to evade it. 

About Oliver I was less certain. I had never liked 
him. I did not want to revive the connection. But I 
knew that it would please the Father to have me. I 
resolved to call, but having no enthusiasm for it, other 
engagements seemed more important, I kept post- 
poning it. 

But coming home to the Teepee one winter afternoon 
about five, I found that he had forestalled me by calling 
first. As I opened the door, I heard Nina’s voice and 
then one that was strange — but I knew at once it was a 
clergyman’s voice. They had not lit a lamp yet and 
the library was illumined only by the open fire. Nor- 
man was sitting on the divan playing with Marie’s 
pig-tail — it was a habit with him, just as some men 


276 


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play with their watch charm. Nina had on her com- 
pany manners and was doing the entertaining. The 
clergyman rose as I entered. He was tall and broad, 
on the verge of rotundity. He wore a clerical vest 
and collar and the fire light sparkled on a large gold 
cross which hung from his watch chain. 

“Here he is,” Nina said as I came in. 

“I — am — very — glad — to — see — you — again — 
Arnold.” 

I did not realize who it was, until Norman spoke up. 

“It’s your cousin, Dr. Drake.” 

“Oh. Hello, Oliver,” I said, shaking hands. 

I reahzed at once that this had not been an entirely 
fitting way to respond to his dignified, almost pompous 
greeting. I find it hard not to portray Oliver in cari- 
catme. He was so utterly foreign to the life I was lead- 
ing, so different from the people I knew that inevitably 
he looked outlandish — at times comical. I have al- 
ways regretted that Browning did not write another 
poem, the reverse of “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” 
giving us the free thinker’s account of that inter- 
view. 

At first Ohver seemed to me appallingly affected. 
But as I got to see more of him I changed the adjective 
to “adapted.” Just as a practicing physician must 
develop certain mannerisms so had Oliver adapted 
himself to his metier. His voice was most impressive. 
It was his working capital and he guarded it with in- 
finite care. He was as much afraid of a sore throat 
as an opera singer. He belonged to that sub-variety 
of his species which is called “liberal.” He had ac- 
cepted the theory of evolution and higher criticism. 
He prided himself on being abreast of his time. He 


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277 


strove — successfully — to give the impression of a 
broad-minded, cultured gentleman. 

I think he enjoyed the flattery of success and he had 
the brains to win it. His wife, whom I met later was, I 
think, dominated by ‘'social” ambitions. She also had 
brains. They were a strong team. Their progress had 
been a steady upward curve. From a small town to a 
small city, then from a mission chapel in Indianapolis 
to its biggest church, from there to Chicago and at last 
to a fashionable charge in New York. And when you 
saw Oliver this progress seemed inevitable. 

Spirituality? I do not think he had need of any. 
It would have been an impediment to his progress. 
It was very hard to remember that he was the son of 
Josiah Drake. 

“How long is it,” he said in his suave, modulated 
voice, “since we saw each other. Not since I left you 
at your prep, school — at least fifteen years.” 

“More,” I said, “twenty.” I could think of noth- 
ing to say. His presence was rather oppressive. But 
it was part of his profession never to be awkward. 

“Well. Now that we are in the same city, I trust we 
will see each other more frequently. You were in 
Europe when we arrived. I wasn’t quite sure whether 
you were back yet or not. But I came in on the chance 
— I got your address from your pubUshers” — ^he made 
a congratulatory bow — “to see if we could have you 
for dinner next Friday. It’s been a great pleasure 
to meet Mr. and Mrs. Benson, I envy you such 
friendship. . . .” 

“Nina,” Norman interrupted, “has been chanting 
your praises for the last half hour.” 

“Ah. You cannot dodge your responsibilities that 


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way, Mr. Benson,” Oliver remarked, with rather heavy 
playfulness. “You have been a most effective chorus. 
Of course, Arnold,” — ^he tmned to me — “your friends 
will always be welcomed at our house. I would be 
very glad, and I am sure Mrs. Drake would be also, 
if you could bring them with you on Friday night.” 

Norman bounced off the divan, as if someone had 
exploded a bomb under him. 

“Oh, no,” he said. “We’re very much obliged to 
you. But Nina and I never go out in society,” — as 
Oliver looked a bit taken aback, Norman went on to 
explain. “You see our marriage was — well — pictur- 
esque. I’ve forgotten the date, but you can find the 
details in the files of any of our newspapers. For- 
tunately, my wife has no social ambitions, so we don’t 
have to risk embarrassing people who are kind enough 
to invite us.” 

Oliver had regained his poise. 

“Being a stranger to the city,” he said, “I am of 
course ignorant of the matter to which you refer 
but” — ^he gracefully took Nina’s hand — “I am quite 
sure that Mrs. Benson would honor any society. How- 
ever if it would expose you to any embarrassment, I 
cannot, of course, insist.” 

Nina’s attitude to Oliver after he was gone was amus- 
ing. She had evidently been impressed with his gran- 
deur. But when Norman jokingly accused her of 
having fallen in love with him, she shuddered. 

“No,” she said with real but ludicrous solemnity — “I 
wouldn’t like to be his wife.” 

Marie, who had had to undergo the ordeal of sitting 
on his knee, remarked that he did not know how to play. 

But in spite of the dislike she had taken to him 


A MAN’S WORLD 


279 


Nina made me tell in detail everything about the dinner 
party. It had, I am sure, been a great success from 
Mrs. Drake’s point of view. There had been two Wall 
Street millionaires at the table, a great lawyer, a con- 
gressman and an ambassador. Because French came to 
me easily I had to entertain the latter’s wife. The food 
and the wine had been exquisite. Socially a suc- 
cess, but humanly a barren affair. 

I made my duty call on Mrs. Drake and would never 
have gone near them again, if it had not been for a 
letter I received from Oliver about a month later. He 
asked me to come for lunch to talk over a scheme he 
was working out for penal reform. It interested me 
immensely to see him and his wife working together. 
He began with a sonorous peroration. The reason the 
church was losing influence was that it did not take 
sufficient interest in social problems. He was develop- 
ing this idea at some length when Mrs. Drake coughed. 

“The idea is familiar,” she said. 

“Yes, my dear.” 

Coming, as he did, to the direction of one of New 
York’s most influential churches, a congregation which 
included many people of great wealth, many people 
of great influence in the world of business and poli- 
tics. . . . Mrs. Blake coughed. 

“I’m sure Cousin Arnold knows about the church.” 

“Yes, my dear. I was about to say. . . .” 

He was about to say that he felt it his duty to try 
to utilize this great force in the cause of human better- 
ment. In a few minutes Mrs. Drake coughed again 
and said, “Naturally.” He had given a good deal of 
consideration, prayerful consideration, to the subject: 
personally he was opposed to the church going into 


280 


A MAN’S WORLD 


politics. He spoke of several well-known clerg3nnen 
who had gone into the fight against Tammany Hall, 
he doubted their wisdom. Of course if one could be 
sure that all their congregation were republicans. . . . 
The lunch was finished at this point and we went into 
the sumptuous library. Mrs. Drake took the subject 
out of his hand. 

“You see, Cousin Arnold,” she said, “we think that 
the role of the church should be conciliating. It is our 
object to attract people — all people to the church — not 
to alienate anyone. And the church cannot mix in any 
of the issues which are vexed — which have partisans 
on each side — without offending and driving people 
away. It is evident that the church must interest 
itself in social questions, must show that it is a power 
to overcome this horrible unrest. But it is very 
hard to find a social problem which is consistent 
with the conciliatory role which the church must pre- 
serve. 

“When Oliver and I read yoim book, we both had the 
same inspiration. Here is just the very problem. What 
you .wrote about the prisons is awful. And no one 
can object to the church taking a definite attitude on 
this question. The Master, himself has instructed 
us to visit those who are in prison.” 

“Exactly,” Oliver put in. 

But she did not give him time to go on. She rapidly 
laid before me their plan. Oliver was to call together a 
group of a dozen fellow clergymen, the most influ- 
ential — I presume she meant the most fashionable — in 
each denomination. I was to speak to them and help 
him to get them interested. They would organize a 
committee, they would give out interviews to the news- 


A MAN’S WORLD 


281 


papers, preach sermons on the subject, get some good 
bills introduced into the legislature — and make a great 
splash! 

I sat back and listened to it with grim amusement. 
This was to be Oliver’s debut in New York. In vulgar 
phrase it was a "press agent campaign.” Oliver — the 
progressive, the fighting clergyman — ^was to get col- 
umns of free advertising. There would surely be a 
great mass meeting in one of the theaters and Oliver 
would get his chance to cast the spell of his oratory 
over fashionable New York. It was an admirable 
scheme. No attack on Tammany Hall, was not one 
of his deacons a director in the street car company? 
Did not the real owner of the gas company rent the 
most expensive pew in the church and did not com- 
plaisant Tammany Hall arrange to have the gas com- 
pany’s ashes removed by the city’s street cleaning de- 
partment? No support to the campaign for decent 
tenements, some of the congregation were landlords. 
And of course no playing with the dangerous subject 
of labor unions. 

" J. H. Greet doesn’t belong to yoiu* church, does he? ” 
I asked. 

"No,” Mrs. Drake replied. "Why?” 

"Well, he has a fat contract for manufacturing cloth 
for prison uniforms.” 

"J. H. Greet?” Oliver said, making a note. "A 
queer name. I never heard of it.” 

Their interest in the matter was evident, but where 
did I come in? Well — after all — publicity is a great 
thing. It must be the basis of every reform. I had very 
little faith in any real good coming from such a cam- 
paign, but at least it would call people’s attention to the 


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issue. It was not to be despised. So I fell in with the 
scheme. 

Several outsiders have complimented me on the news- 
paper noise we made, supposing that I was the motive 
power of it. The praise belongs to Oliver — and his 
wife. It was remarkable the skill with which they 
handled it. It was amusing to watch the suave ma- 
noeuvres by which Oliver always secured the top line. 
For a month he worked hard, put in hours of real study. 
His great speech in Daly’s was masterful. And then 
things fizzled out. None of the bills got past a second 
reading. 

At one of the last conferences I had with Oliver, he 
asked me why I did not go to Tennessee and visit the 
Father. 

“Why don’t you have him come on here for a vaca- 
tion?” I asked. “He hasn’t been in New York since 
before the war.” 

Oliver shrugged his shoulders. 

“I make a point of going out to see him every two 
years — but he’d be out of place here. The world has 
moved a lot since his day. He would not understand. 
He’s the type of the old school. Progress is heresy. 
Why I’m sure he’d be shocked at my wearing a collar 
like this. He’d accuse me of papacy. I always put 
on mufti when I visit him.” 

It was the patronizing superiority of his tone that 
angered me. I realized suddenly how lonely the Father 
must be. I had always thought of him as quite happy 
in having a son who had followed in his footsteps. I 
am not sure but that with all my outspoken heresy, 
I was more of a true son to him than Oliver. I resolved 
to go out to Tennessee at my first opportunity. 


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283 


I am half sorry I went. It was an unsuccessful visit. 
The barren little mountain village had changed not at 
all in the years I had been away. There were a few 
more battle monuments on the hillside and the people 
still talked of little beside the war. The big parsonage 
beside the barn-like church was just as I had left it. 
The Father’s wants were looked after by the numerous 
progeny of Barnabas, the negro body servant who had 
followed him through the war. 

I had been thrown out for my Godlessness and had 
been expected to go to the dogs. It was something of 
an affront to the traditions that I had not. To have 
WTitten a book was a matter of fame in that little vil- 
lage. I found that the Father with childlike pride had 
boasted far and wide of my having been chosen as 
delegate to the prison congress at Rome. It was not 
to be accounted for that instead of coming back as 
the prodigal I should return as a “distinguished son.” 
The minor prophets of the place were disappointed 
in me. 

Even the Father was bewildered. He came down to 
the gateway to meet me — a fine old figure, leaning on 
his ebony cane, his undimmed eyes shining from under 
his shaggy white eyebrows. He put his arm over my 
shoulder as we walked back to the house, as though he 
was glad of someone to lean upon. And all through 
supper he talked to me about my father and mother. 
He told me again how my father had died bravely 
at the head of a dare-devil sortie out of Nashville. 
And he told me with great charm about the time when 
they had been children. We sat out on the porch for a 
while and he went on with his reminiscencing. Then 
suddenly he stopped. 


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“Oh,” he said, “how I ramble. You will be want- 
ing to go and call on Margot.” 

It was like visiting the ghosts. Margot had aged 
more than any of my generation. We were still under 
forty but her hair was quite gray. Her face had lost 
its beauty — pinched out by her narrow, empty life. 
And yet as she stood on the porch to greet me, as I 
came up the walk to her house, there was much of the 
old charm about her. There are few women like her 
nowadays. I knew many in my childhood — the real 
heroes of the great war. The women who in the bit- 
ter days of reconstruction, bound up the wounds of 
defeat, bore almost all the burdens and laid the found- 
nations of the new South. They were ^acious women, 
in spite of their arrogant pride in their breed. They 
knew how to suffer and smile. 

We sat side by side on the porch — leagues and leagues 
apart. I found it strangely hard to talk with her. 
She told, in her quiet colorless voice, all her news. Her 
mother had died several years before. A1 was married 
and established in Memphis and so forth. Just as the 
supply of news ran out, a rooster awoke from some bad 
dream and crowed sleepily. 

“Margot,” I said, “do you still steal eggs?” 

“0 Arnold,” she laughed, “haven’t you forgotten 
that? I have — almost. A long time ago I paid mother 
back and I saved fifteen dollars out of my allowance 
and sent it to the Presbyterian church.” 

I had always considered myself a fairly honest man, 
but it had never occmred to me to make restitution 
for these childish thefts. 

“It was awful,” she went on, “why did we do 
it?” 


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“Margot,” I said, “haven’t you ever committed a 
worse sin than that? ” 

She fell suddenly serious. It was several minutes 
before she rephed. 

“Yes, Arnold, I’ve been discontented and rebellious.” 

I looked out at the village street, at the uninteresting 
houses, at the glare of the “general store” where liquor 
was sold and where doubtless Col. Jennings, illumined 
by the moonshine whiskey of our mountains, was re- 
counting to a bored audience of loafers some details 
of one of Stonewall Jackson’s charges. It was need- 
less to ask what it was that made her discontented, 
against what she had been rebelhous. And the deadly 
torpor of that village life seemed to settle about me 
like a cloud of suffocating smoke. There sat beside 
me this fine spirited woman — useless. Her glorious 
potentiality of motherhood unused. Defrauded of her 
birth-right — wasted! I had an impulse to jump up and 
shake my fist at it all. I wanted to tell her that her 
greatest sin had been not to revolt more efficiently. 
But that would have been cruel now that her hair was 
so gray. 

“Do you know who has helped me most? ” she asked. 
“Your uncle. He is a saint, Arnold. We are great 
friends now. He came here one time when father was 
sick. He has been a wonderful comfort to me. Some- 
times I go and call on him. He’s very lonely. And he’s 
such a gallant old gentleman. When I see him drive 
by in his buckboard I always wave to him and as soon 
as he’s out of sight I go over to the house and scold the 
niggers. They would never do any work if somebody 
did not fuss them. And you know it makes me more 
contented to watch him. I say to myself that if such a 


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wonderful man, so wise and learned can find plenty 
to do to serve the Master in this little village there 
must be quite enough for just a woman like me. There’s 
a heap of comfort in that thought. But sometimes I 
read some story or think about you all out in the big 
world and it seems very small here — and lonely.” 

There was nothing I could think to say, so again we 
were silent. 

“Arnold,” she said suddenly. “Do you ever read 
King Arthur stories any more?” 

“Whenever I get five minutes,” I replied. “The 
people I live with have a little girl — Marie. I’m teach- 
ing them to her.” 

“I’m so glad — and Froissart?” 

She went into the house and brought out the old 
soiled volume. We looked through it together and then 
she said that perhaps I would want to take it East for 
Marie. But I had a feeling that she wished to keep it. 
So I said Marie was too young for Froissart yet. Once 
more we fell silent. I remember the open book on her 
thin knees, her thin aristocratic hand between the 
pages, the profile of her face. Lamp-light shone out 
through the window upon her and she looked almost 
beautiful again. 

I am never sure of what is in a woman’s heart. But 
I could not explain the constraint upon us except that 
perhaps she had always been waiting for my home- 
coming, still nourishing in her heart our childish love — 
still hoping. But there was nothing to hope. It was 
not in her power to conceive what I was. I was battered 
and scarred by fights she had never imagined, dis- 
illusioned of dreams she had never dreamed. I had 
left the village years ago — irrevocably. She would 


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have been utterly lost in my world. At last, rather 
mournfully, I said “good night.” 

The next day the Father was on the porch when I 
came down. He greeted me with a sort of wistful 
expectancy in his eyes. And my cordial “good morn- 
ing” did not seem to satisfy him. I did not understand 
until at breakfast. 

“My son,” he said, “I have often wished — it would 
have made me very happy — if you had married Mar- 
got.” So he at least had hoped that this would be the 
result of my home-coming. 

“She’s a rare girl,” he said, “a fine spirit. A good 
wife is a great help to a man in leading an upright life. 
A pillar of strength.” 

“The fates have denied me that help,” I said. And 
I did not realize till too late the pagan form I had given 
my words. 

But the match had been lighted. The Father did not 
believe that any good could come to a man except from 
the religion of Christ. Try as hard as I might I could 
not prevent the conversation from taking that turn. 
If he had loved me less we might have been better 
friends. But the only thing which mattered to him 
was the salvation of souls. And in proportion to his 
love for me he must needs seek my conversion. On 
the one point where we could not agree, his very 
affection made him insistent. 

We both tried very hard to be sweet tempered about 
it. But I was in a difiicult position. If I did not try 
to answer his arguments he thought I was convinced 
but unwilling to admit it. If I argued, it angered him. 
He would lose his temper and then be very apologetic 
about it. For an hour or so we would talk pleasantly 


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of other things. Then inevitably the conversation 
would swing back to the subject he cared most about. 
After supper he at last brought things to a pass from 
which there was but one escape. 

“My son,” he said, “the day after to-morrow is the 
first Sunday in the month — Communion Sunday. 
You are still a member of my church, you have never 
asked to be relieved of the solemn responsibilities you 
took when you united with us. Will you join the rest 
of the members at the communion table?” 

“I’m sorry. Father,” I said, my heart suddenly 
hardening at the memory of the way I had been pushed 
into church membership. “I’ll have to leave to-morrow 
night. I must be back at work early next week.” 

I had expected to stay longer. But for me to have 
gone to church and refused communion, would have 
been almost an insult to him. To have pretended to a 
faith I did not have, seemed to me a worse sort of a lie 
than the one I used. And so — ^having been home but 
two nights — I returned to the city and work. 

IX 

Except for my vacations, I have missed very few 
working days in the Tombs since. And as the months 
have slipped along I have added steadily to my writings 
on criminology. To some it might seem a dreary life. 
It has not been so. There have been compensations. 

The chief one has been the pleasant home in the 
Teepee. It would be easy to fill pages about it. But 
those who have been part of a loving family will know 
what I mean without my writing it. And it is past 
my power to paint it for those who have not shared it. 

I recall especially the Christmas Eve when Marie 


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289 


was nine years old. Norman was at work at the table. 
Marie sat on my knee telling me some wonderful story. 
Nina came in from the kitchen where she and Guiseppe 
were concocting the morrow’s feast. She sat down on 
the arm of my chair and said she had a secret to whisper 
in my ear. Norman looked up from his work and 
smiled. 

“It’s the one thing which has troubled her,” he said. 
“Not having done her duty by the birth-rate but once.” 

The startled wonder came back again to Nina’s eyes 
in those days. Even little Marie felt the “presence” 
among us and was awed. 

But the fates had one more blow reserved for me. 
The year was just turning into spring when it fell. One 
morning at the Tombs, a court attendant called me 
to the telephone. It was Nina. Norman, she said 
in a frightened voice, was very sick. He had complained 
the day before of a cold and had gone to bed in the 
afternoon. I had not seen him that morning. When I 
reached the Teepee, he was delirious, in a high fever. 
We had no regular doctor, so I called up Aim on the 
telephone. 

“It looks to me like pneumonia,” I told her. “Can 
you send us a good doctor and a nurse? ” 

Within half an hour Ann had come herself with one 
of the city’s most famous doctors. 

Nina would not leave the bed-side. I waited for 
news in the library. It reminded me of the time, years 
before, when I had waited for a verdict on my eyes. 
I do not suppose that there are many friendships as 
ours had been. It is hard to believe that such relation- 
ships can be anything but permanent. It seemed im- 
possible that I could lose Norman. But Ann made 


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no pretense of hope. There was almost no chance she 
said. She telephoned out to her mother that she would 
be kept in town, and went back to the sickroom. 

All the afternoon and all night long they fought it 
out. Sometimes when the suspense was too great I 
would go to the door. Nina sat with staring eyes at 
the head of the bed. Ann and the doctor were busy 
with ice-presses. At night-fall I gave Marie her supper 
and put her to bed in my room. She had become sud- 
denly frightened and I sat beside her a long time, 
comforting her with stories of the Round Table, until 
at last she fell asleep. 

Norman slept a little, but most of the time, tossed 
about deUriously — calling out to someone who was not 
there. “Oh Louise!” he would moan, “How can you 
believe that about me? I’m not spotless — but that 
isn’t true. Don’t think that of me. It’s too cruel.” 
But he got no comfort. The woman of his dehrium 
was obdurate. 

The dawn was just breaking when Ann came and 
told me he was conscious. It was the end. Nina was 
kneeling beside him weeping silently. He smiled at 
me and tried to hold out his hand, but he was too weak. 

“It’s as though they had let me come back to say 
‘goodbye,’” he whispered. “Be good to them, 
Arnold — to Nina and Marie and the one that’s coming. 
She’s a good girl. ...” A look of wonder came into 
his eyes, with his last strength he stroked her hair. 

“It’s fimny. I thought she was — just a toy — but 
she’s got a soul, Arnold. Don’t forget that, old man. 
Promise me” — I gripped his hand — “Oh yes. I know 
you’ll be good to her. I know — that’s all right. Poor 
little girl. I wish she wouldn’t cry so. — I’d like to 


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kiss her once more” — Ann lifted her up so that he might 
kiss her. “There! There! Little one. You mustn’t 
cry. It’s not so bad as all that. Arnold’U take care of 
you. Good luck — all of you. Don’t be afraid. . . . 

I’m. . . .” 

It was a queer funeral. Some of his relatives, who 
had cut him since his marriage, came. It was on a 
Sunday so the Studenten Verein could turn out. Mrs. 
O’Hara, whose coal he had bought for seven years, 
came with her eight children. So did our washer- 
woman, Frau Zimmer, with her epileptic son. Guiseppe 
rode in the front carriage with Nina, Marie and I, and 
cried more than any of us. The Studenten Manner 
Chor sang a dirge. In the motley crowd I saw a man 
in the costume of an Episcopalian clergyman. As 
they were dispersing, he came up to me. 

“I am unknown to you, sir,” he said, “I want to tell 
you that I believe in immortahty — and that I am sure 
your friend is sitting on the right-hand of our Heavenly 
Father. I hope to be worthy to meet him again. He 
was so good that I am surprised that he escaped cruci- 
fixion. I am only one of many whom he pulled out of 
hell. I can not. . . .” 

He binst into tears and disappeared into the crowd. 
Somehow, out of all the tributes to Norman which 
poured in on me in those days, the incoherent words 
of this unknown clergyman touched me most. What 
his story was, how Norman had helped him, I have no 
idea. 

When we got back to the Teepee, we found Ann 
there, she had put things in order for us. She took Nina 
to bed and gave her something to make her sleep. Then 
she joined me in the library. She picked up her hat 


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to go away, but I detained her. And so we sat together 
through the afternoon. As I remember we talked very 
little — except for some directions she gave me about 
Nina’s health. At twilight Guiseppe came in with 
Marie, whom he had taken for a walk in the park. We 
all had supper together. Aim helped me put Marie 
to bed and then she went away. 

It was very comforting, having just lost one friend, 
to refind another. There has been no ripple of estrange- 
ment between us since. Our love relation has been the 
anchor — the steadfast thing — of my later life. 

Norman’s will left a comfortable annuity to Nina and 
the children, the rest went into his educational endow- 
ment. I am a trustee of both sums. I think they have 
both been administered as he would have wished. 

The baby was a boy. Nina told me that long before 
its father died, they had arranged, if it was a boy, to 
name it after me. I would have preferred to have 
called it Norman. One evening, as I was writing in the 
library, I glanced up from my paper. Nina was nurs- 
ing the youngster, there were tears on her cheeks. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked. 

“Oh! I wish he could have lived to see the man- 
child. Sometimes I was afraid he might grow tired 
of me. But he would have loved his son — always. I 
wish he could have seen him.” 

But I wish that Norman could have Uved to see Nina. 
I had always a feeling that he did not entirely ap- 
preciate her. She has developed greatly since his 
death. Not long afterwards I began to notice long 
and serious Italian conversations between her and 
Guiseppe. And I asked him one day, jokingly, what 
they found to talk about so earnestly. 


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293 


“I am teaching her, Mister Arnold, how to be a lady. 
Now that their father, who was a gentleman, is dead, 
it is necessary that the mother of the children should be 
a lady.” 

Guiseppe is too much of a Republican and Nina too 
little of a snob for these words to have anything but 
the noblest meanings. 

“It is difficult for a simple man like me,” he went 
on. “But have I not been a soldier of liberty on two 
continents? I have seen many fine ladies and I tell 
her about them. And also I have read books.” 

Nina as well has taken to reading. Painfully she 
has recalled the lessons of her brief school days. Of 
course I have helped her all I could. She has taken the 
responsibilities of motherhood in a way she would 
scarcely have done if Norman had lived. 

It was perhaps a year after his death, that I came 
home one evening and found Nina in a great flurry. 
On tiptoe, her finger on her lips, she led me into the 
library and closed the door. 

“Oh! my friend,” she said, “you will not be angry? 
There’s a woman in my room. Such a sad old woman. 
She is very drunk. I found her downstairs — in the 
hallway. There were boys teasing her. At first I was 
frightened and ran upstairs. Then I remembered how 
he would never leave anyone so. I brought her up to 
my room. You will not be angry?” 

She has tmned the Teepee into an informal sort of 
a rescue mission. I never know whom I will find in my 
favorite chair. Sometimes they have delirium tremens 
and shriek all night. At first I was worried about the 
effect on the children. But Nina and Ann said it 
would do them no harm. I cannot see that it has. 


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One thing about it has impressed me immensely. 
It has often happened in my work that I have brought 
home a boy or a man from the Tombs and let them 
sleep on the divan till some better place was found for 
them. Not infrequently these guests have departed 
without formalities, taking as mementoes any silver 
spoons they found at hand. Not one of Nina’s 
women have stolen anything. It passes my under- 
standing. 

Nina has a great admiration for Ann, but does not 
understand her at all. She cannot conceive of the 
reasons why Ann refuses to get married. It is a thing 
to philosophize about, the attitude of these two women 
towards matrimony. They are both good women, 
yet to one marriage seems a degradation and serfdom, 
to the other marriage meant escape from the mire, 
emancipation from the most abysmal slavery the world 
has ever known. Watching them has helped me un- 
derstand many of life’s endless paradoxes. 

The only new thing which has come into my life since 
Norman’s death has been the children. I am legal 
guardian for Nina’s two. And several years ago, when 
Billy — Ann’s nephew — grew to high school age, she 
tiirned him over to me, fearing that all-woman house- 
hold might not be the best place for a growing boy. 
So he came to the Teepee, going to school in the city, 
spending only his week-ends at Cromley. 

My work in the Tombs goes on as ever. A new prison 
has been built, with cleaner corridors, roomier cells, 
sanitary plumbing and so forth. But the old tragedy 
goes on just the same. My title has been changed from 
county detective to probation officer, and I have been 
given some assistants. Certainly there has been im- 


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295 


provement. The rougher edges of justice have been 
worn off. But the bandage is still over the eyes of the 
goddess. The names of the judges have changed, but 
the inherent viciousness of their situation is unaltered. 
There is now, just as when I started, ten times as much 
work as I can do to even alleviate the manifold cruelties 
of the place. It is still — in spite of the new build- 
ing — called the Tombs. 

And Suzanne? If anyone should ask me what has 
become of her, I would have to reply by a question — 
“Which Suzanne?” I have seen very little of the one 
who came back to America. Once or twice I have en- 
countered her in public meetings. Three years after I 
came back from Europe, I received her wedding cards — 
an architect named Stone. I knew him slightly. He 
seems to be very much in love with his wife. One comes 
across their names in the papers quite frequently. They 
are active socialists. But Mrs. Stone is a strange and 
rather unreal personality to me. 

But there is the other Suzanne, her of the slim, 
boyish form, who tried to learn to throw stones hke a 
man and was vexed when I laughed at her, the Suzanne 
who loved the poppies, the Suzanne of our earnest 
discussions, the Suzanne who was a prophetess, the 
enthusiastic apostle of the new faith, who like Deborah 
of old, sang songs of the great awakening to come, 
and the Suzanne of Moret — whom I loved. She still 
lives. I cannot see that the passing years have in any 
way dimmed the vision. Mrs. Stone is getting ma- 
tronly, her hair is losing its luster. Suzanne is still 
straight and slender. There are moments when she 
comes to me out of the mystery of dreams and, sitting 
on the floor, rests her head — her fearless head — on my 


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knees. I run my fingers through her amazing hau* and 
try to capture the fitful light of the fire, which glows 
there, now so golden, now so red. . . . And as the 
dream is sweet, so is the awakening bitter. 


BOOK VII 


I come now to the last section of my book. There 
can be no doubt that it must be about the children. 

As I get older, in spite of my best intentions, the 
work in the Tombs grows mechanical. Each new 
prisoner has of comse his individual peculiarities, but 
I find myself frequently saying: “It’s like a case I had 
back in 1900.” And it is the same with my writing. 
It is mostly a re-statement — I hope a continually 
better and more forceful statement — of conclusions 
I have held for many years. 

The light of these later years has been my vicarious 
parentage — ^these three young adventurers who call 
me, “Daddy.” I suppose I look at them with an in- 
dulgent eye, magnifying their virtues, ignoring their 
limitations. But they seem very wonderful to me. 
Thinking of them, watching them, make me sympathize 
with Moses on Nebo’s lonely mountain. Through 
them I catch glimpses of a fairer land than I have 
known, which I will never enter. 

On his eighteenth birthday, Billy asked me why I was 
not a socialist. I knew he was leaning that way. He 
is an artist. Ann wanted him to go to college, but he 
broke away to the classes at Cooper Union. Now at 
twenty-four he is bringing home prizes and gold medals 
which he pretends to despise. Many of his artist chums 
are socialists. I tried to get him into an argument 
on the subject, but, as is his way, he would not arguq 
297 


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He would only ask me questions. What did I think 
about this? What did I think about that? 

About a week later at breakfast, he handed me a 
little red card, which was his certificate of membership 
in the party. 

“You can’t join till you’re eighteen,” he said. “You 
see. Daddy, I don’t think a chap can ever paint any- 
thing, do anything worth while in art, unless he be- 
lieves in something besides himself — something bigger. 
I don’t know anything bigger than this faith in the 
people.” 

He had a pretty bad time of it the next Sunday at 
Cromley. His grandmother is such a seasoned warrior 
for anarchism, that she has as little tolerance for 
socialists as our “best people” would have for her. 
Ann was neutral, for she holds that what one believes 
matters not half so much as the way one believes it. 
And I would do nothing to dampen the youngster’s 
ardor. It is amazing to me. He has the faith to look 
at our state legislature and believe in democracy, to 
look at the Tombs and believe in justice. 

In fact I have sometimes thought of joining his 
party. I would like to enter as closely into his life as 
possible. But all this talk of revolution repulses me. 
It is the impatience of youth. The world does not 
move fast enough for them — they forget that it moves 
at all. But it has spun a long, long way even in my 
life. 

I recall our fight for a reformatory. It ended in 
fiasco. But it was only the beginning of a movement. 
Baldwin was a man who held on. Before long he had 
persuaded a western state to try his scheme. To-day 
there are more than thirty of our states with reforma- 


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299 


, tories for boys. The later ones, better than Baldwin’s 
dream. And then this probation system. It is the 
biggest blow ever dealt to the old idea of the Tombs. 
Of com^e it is having growing pains. The special 
advocates of the system are distressed because of the 
hundreds of probation officers only a few are efficient. 
Give it time. 

And of broader import is the awakening of de- 
mocracy in the land. It will take a generation or more 
before historians can properly adjudge this movement. 
To-day we see only sporadic demonstrations of it, 
speeches here and there, in favor of referendmn and 
so forth. The real issue often veiled by the personalities 
of candidates. The noise is only the effervescence of 
a great idea, a great aspiration, which is taking form 
in the mind of the nation. 

The country is ten times as thoughtful about social 
problems as it was when my generation began. Recently 
the legislature made an appropriation to give me a new 
assistant in the Tombs. I wrote to several colleges 
and a dozen men applied for the job. I could take my 
pick. Twelve men out of one year’s college crop! I 
was a pioneer. 

And young Fletcher, the man I chose, asked me the 
other day, what I thought of Devine’s book, “The 
Causes of Misery.” He is beginning work on the basis 
of that book. And Devine speaks of “The Abolition 
of Poverty” as if it was a commonplace. No one dared 
to dream that poverty could be abolished when I was 
a young man. We thought it was an indivisible part 
of civilization. I remember when I first heard Jacob 
Riis talk of abolishing the slums! I thought he was a 
dreamer. The tenement house department reports 


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that a million new homes have been built in the city — 
under the new law — with no dark rooms. And the 
abolition of tuberculosis! Why I can remember a 
cholera epidemic! These young socialists do not 
realize what we have done. 

Last summer I took Nina and Marie and young 
Arnold, he is ten now, down on the Maine coast to an 
island where Billy and some of his artist friends have 
a camp. As I mingled with this colony of ardent young 
people, in spite of the sympathy, which real friendship 
with Billy has given me for them, I felt like a stranger. 
I am sure they think I am an old fogey. My mind 
kept jumping back to my own youth, comparing them 
with what I had been at their age. In so many ways 
they were better men than I was, better equipped for 
life. 

I remember especially one conversation with Billy. 
He had just finished a canvas as the twilight was fall- 
ing. I think it is the finest thing he has done yet. There 
is a stretch of surf in the foreground and beyond the 
islands rise higher and higher to the peak of Mount 
Desert. I cannot desciibe it beyond these barren de- 
tails. Somehow he has accentuated the rising upward 
lines, by some magic of his color he has infused the thing 
with immense emotion. 

“What are you going to call it?” I asked as he was 
putting up his tubes. 

“It hasn’t any name,” he said. “It’s just a feeling 
I get sometimes — up here with the sea and the moun- 
tains.” He pondered it a moment, seeking words. He 
is not a ready talker. “I think it’s one of the psahns,” 
he said at last, “you know the one that begins: ‘I 
will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence com- 


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301 


eth my help.’ It’s sort of religious — being all by one’s 
self and looking up.” 

“What is your religion, Billy?” I asked. 

He sat silent, stopped arranging his brushes and 
looked off at the last of the sunlight on the summit of 
the mountain. 

“Have you got one?” I persisted. 

“Oh, yes,” he said quickly. “Yes — at least some- 
times it comes to me. There are days on end when it 
doesn’t come — ^barren days. And then again it comes 
very strong. I haven’t any name for it. I think the 
trouble with most religions is that people try to define 
them. It doesn’t seem to fit into words.” 

Again he was busy with his kit. But when everything 
was ready, instead of starting home, he sat down again. 

“It’s funny,” he said, “I’m quite sure you can’t 
talk about religion satisfactorily. But we all want to. 
And as soon as you try to put it into words some of it 
escapes — the best part of it. I think that’s why paint- 
ing appeals to me. You can say things with colors 
you can’t with words. 

“You remember those reproductions, I showed you, 
of Fehcien Rops, the Belgium etcher. You didn’t 
like them. I don’t either. He’s wonderfully clever — 
My God! I wish I could draw like that man — but I 
don’t think it’s art. I don’t think he ever looked up- 
ward — lifted up his eyes to the hills. I guess my re- 
ligion is just that indescribable something which changes 
craftsmanship into art. I want to draw well, I want my 
color to be right, I want technique — all I can get of it. 
But even if I was perfect in all these, I would have to 
hft up my eyes unto the hills for help before I could 
do the real thing — the thing I want to do.” 


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“And when you lift up your eyes, Billy,” I asked, 
“who is it that gives you help?” 

He spoke rather reluctantly after a moment’s pause. 

“That’s the trouble with talking religion. You get 
mixed up between the figurative and the literal. Does 
it really matter Who — or Where? I don’t think of any 
person up there in the afterglow on the mountain top. 
There doesn’t have to be any hills even. Sometimes 
I get ‘help’ in my studio — ^with nothing to look up to 
but the white-washed lights and the rafters. 

“We all need ‘help’ and when we get it — we’ve ‘ got 
religion.’ It’s all so vague that we have to use symbols. 
One person has associated ‘help’ with high mass and 
choir boys and tawdry images. Another gets his 
connection by listening to a village quartet murder 
‘Nearer my God to Thee.’ WThen Nelson was over 
illustrating that book on Egypt he learned the Mo- 
hammedan ‘Call to Prayer.’ It’s a weird sing-song 
thing. There are millions of people who, when they 
hear that, get the feeling that they need ‘ help ’ and chase 
round to the Mosque. I haven’t found anything more 
suggestive than those words of King David. 

“Sometimes my pictures are rotten and I sign them 
‘William Barton.’ Once in a long while I paint one 
that is better, — better than my brush tricks, better 
than my technique, better than just me — ^and I always 
put a little star after my name. It means ‘this picture 
was painted by William Barton and God.’ That’s my 
religion.” 

“It’s all summed up in that old Jewish song — ‘I will 
lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh 
my help.’ Do you know it?” 

Yes. I knew it. I sat in the Father’s study, all 


A MAN’S WORLD 


303 


one fine afternoon, when the other boys were playing 
ball, and learned that song by rote, in punishment for 
upsetting his inkwell. It seems very wonderful to me 
that the Bible should seem a thing of beauty to a young- 
ster. It was at best an unpleasant piece of drudgery 
for me — ^more often a form of chastisement. What 
stirs the deepest emotions in Billy’s heart, only re- 
minds me of a blot of ink on the Father’s desk and the 
shouts of the boys out in the street whom I might not 
join. 

I had been suspecting for some time that although 
Billy and Marie both call me “Daddy,” they were 
coming to realize that they are not brother and sister. 
My suspicions were confirmed the other day by Nina. 
She asked me solemnly what I thought of Billy. And 
when I declared that he was the straightest, cleanest, 
finest youngster I knew, she said. 

“Perhaps. But he is not as fine as Norman was.” 

I said that God had apparently mislaid the mold 
in which He had cast Norman. 

“I wish that Marie could have as good a husband as 
I did — she’s a better girl.” 

Nina has immense respect for her daughter. And 
Marie deserves it. A habit of philosophizing forces 
me to realize that the greatest part of the world has 
failed to appreciate, has in fact utterly ignored the 
existence of, this marvelous foster daughter of mine. 
There are, doubtless, many parents who even if they 
had had the good fortune to know Marie would stub- 
bornly prefer their own daughters. But if I were twenty 
years younger, I would certainly enter the race against 
Billy. She gets her looks from her mother — pure 
Lombard — ^but she has inherited Norman’s irreverent, 


304 


A MAN’S WORLD 


incisive vision and his tricks of speech. She decided 
to follow her father’s chief interest and now, at nine- 
teen, is attending a kindergarten normal school. 

But the thing, for which I give Marie my highest 
reverence is her attitude to her mother. She knows the 
truth. I found that they had talked this over before 
Norman died. It was his wish that she should not be 
told by strangers. And so nothing was hidden from 
her, no questions were evaded and she grew into the 
knowledge of her mother’s story, with as little shock 
as she learned the multiplication table. It is very 
sweet to watch them together, this quiet, sad eyed old 
woman, who can write with difficulty and this su- 
perbly modern girl, who has had every advantage of 
education. Marie has sense enough to know that very, 
very few people have been blest with finer mothers. 

A few nights after this talk with Nina, I found Marie 
alone in the library reading a red paper covered book 
by Karl Krautsky — “The Road to Power.” Across 
the corner, in his big, boyish handwriting, was scrawled, 
“William Barton.” 

“Marionette,” I said, thinking of what her mother 
had said, “Do you believe in free love?” 

“Not for a minute,” she snapped, “it’s just another 
of your man tricks to get the better of your superiors.” 

Marie is a suffragette. But her jibe at me did not 
satisfy her. The thing was evidently on her mind. She 
came over and sat on the arm of my chair. 

“Don’t laugh at me. Daddy. It’s so serious. I 
think it’s all wrapped up in the big woman question. 
How can there beany real freedom except among equals? 
In the bottom of my heart I think it is a beautiful ideal. 
If I were in love with a man, I’d just want to be with 


A MAN’S WORLD 


305 


him. It seems a little degrading to take a justice of the 
peace into one’s confidence in so private a matter. I 
would feel ashamed to tell a stranger I was going to 
love my sweetheart. And in a sense I like the idea of 
freedom. It would be horrible to have my husband kiss 
me because it was the law; because he’d promised to — 
if he didn’t really want to. 

“But that’s only a private personal view of it. It 
doesn’t seem to me the important thing, what the 
politicians call 'the main issue.’ This trying to be 
individually free, this fussing over individual rights, 
seems sort of early Victorian. . . .” 

“What, ” I interrupted, “you wouldn’t call Ann — one 
of the first women to win distinction in a profession — 
you wouldn’t call her Early Victorian?” 

“Well. I don’t mean Ann. She’s an exception. No, 
she isn’t either. I mean her, too. Nowadays we think 
of things socially. It doesn’t matter so much whether 
I’m free, whether I get justice, it’s the others — the 
race — ^we must work for. Ann’s wonderful. You know 
how much I love her. But she don’t look at things the 
way we do. 

“We must think not only of the few women, here and 
there, the giants like Ann, who are strong enough 
to stand alone, but of all the women — and the children. 
That’s just the point. We’re trying to learn how not to 
stand alone — ^how to stand together. We’ve got to 
ignore our own preferences and rights and learn to 
fight for woman’s rights. 

“Doesn’t most of the prostitution come from the 
free love of weak girls? Even when the cadets go after 
'them just to make money, isn’t it love on the girl’s 
part? What they think is love? We must fight and 


306 


A MAN’S WORLD 


fight and fight to make women realize that they mustn’t 
love just for themselves. That it isn’t right towards 
the race for them to love blindly — that it’s a sin, a social 
sin, for us to love until we’re sure of ourselves, sure 
of the man, sure for the children. It’s a sin for a woman 
to sacrifice herself to a man just because she loves 
him — a sin even to take risks. 

“Somehow, until we’ve won freedom and equality 
and independence, we’ve got to insist on guarantees. 
I don’t see how we can get them except through laws, 
through old-fashioned marriages. We women who are 
stronger, and better educated and able to support 
ourselves and children, we must always think of the 
others who are less fortunate. And as long as you men 
take advantage of any of our sisters, we won’t listen 
to your free love talk. So there!” 

“Daddy,” she said after she had rested her cheek 
against mine for a while. “I’ll tell you a secret. Ssh! 
Don’t you ever breathe it! Do you know whom we 
suffragists have to fight? It’s women! If it was only 
you men, we’d have won long ago. It isn’t the men who 
enslave us. It’s tradition and habit. Long training 
had made us selfish — divided — ^weak. 

“Just take the worst case. It’s mother’s story all 
over again — all the time. She tried to get away. Half 
a dozen men, instinctively, acted together, for their 
common interest — and were strong. They didn’t 
reason it out. Blackie did not have to say to them, 
you help me beat my girl, and I’ll help you beat yours 
and so we’ll keep them all scared. It’s a long inherited 
tradition with men to act together like that, second 
nature — almost an instinct. But when a cadet beats a 
girl, do the other girls rush together like that and fight 


A MAN’S WORLD 


307 


for their common interest? No. Each one for herself 
sneaks off and tries to placate her man. It’s just the 
same with ‘respectable’ people. If a woman tries to 
be free, the men are all against her with their legisla- 
tures and courts and aU that. Do the other women 
stand together to help her? Oh, no. They cut her. 
Just like the prostitutes, they try to ingratiate them- 
selves with their husbands by spitting at the one who 
tried to be free. 

“If we women were only civiUzed enough really to 
co-operate, to stick together, shoulder to shoulder — oh, 
we’d put you men in your place quick enough. In- 
dividuaUsm, trying to stand alone, is the worst enemy 
women can have to-day. We’ve got to learn how to use 
our united strength. 

“And we are learning — ^too. Remember that big 
shirtwaist strike? It was wonderful the way the girls 
stuck together. I don’t believe that any time before 
in the history of this old world women have stood by 
each other Uke that — with such loyalty. A lot of your 
stupid men-papers, had editorials wondering why up- 
town society women took so much interest in the strike. 
Why, even the rich suffragists have sense enough to 
know that solidarity is ten times more important than 
the vote. If you men only give us a long, hard fight 
for it, make us throw stones and slap policemen and 
go to jail and all that, we’ll learn this lesson of standing 
together and then we’ll know how to use the franchise 
when we get it. Oh! The time is coming. Daddy. 
Watch out.” 

“I’m not frightened.” I said, “If I was as near to 
thirty as I am to fifty, I guess I would be an enthusiastic 
suffragetter. Anything you wanted would look good 


308 


A MAN’S WORLD 


to me. Do you think I would have had any chance il 
I had encountered you when I was young enough to 
be your lover?” 

“I wonder what you were like, Daddy, twenty years 
ago — just when I was beginning. Oh, I guess I would 
have liked you. But even if I did, I would have sent 
a lawyer to you with a long contract, specifying my 
various and sundry privileges and your corresponding 
duties. Then I would have led you down to the City 
Hall and made you sign each and every article with a 
big oath. How would you have liked that?” 

“I’d have submitted joyfully.” 

Her arm tightened about my neck. 

“And do you know what I would have done then, 
Daddy?” she asked after a moment’s silence. “I 
guess — ^just as soon as we were alone — I’d have torn 
up that contract into little pieces. And I’d have said, 
‘ Oh, My Lord and Master, be humble to me in public, 
for the sake of all my poor sisters who are afraid — but 
here in private, please, trample on me some. And oh! 
if you love me — make me darn your socks.’ 

“Oh Daddy, that’s the heart-break of it all — there 
was a catch in her voice — “That’s what’s hard. We 
know that we must fight for our freedom and equality — 
for the other women’s sake. And all the while — if we 
are in love — ^what our heart cries out for is a ruler. We 
want to serve.” 

I think when I get a chance I will tell Billy to show 
his muscle now and then. 

So this is where I am today. My experiment in 
ethics? It has failed. I can no more surely distinguish 
right from wrong today, than when I was a boy in 
school. 


A MAN’S WORLD 


309 


My best efforts landed Jerry — innocent — in prison. 
The one time when I violated every rule I had laid 
down for my guidance in the Tombs, when I lied pro- 
fusely, played dirty politics, compounded a felony, 
and went on a man-hunt, with hate in my heart, I dis- 
posed of the pimp Blackie, freed Nina, gave happiness 
to Norman. Marie is the result. 

Certainly one of the best things in my life has been 
Ann’s love. It came to me without any striving on my 
part, it has been in no way a reward for effort or aspira- 
tion. Step by step it has seemed to me wrong. I do 
not believe in free love. I cannot justify it any more 
than I could stealing eggs when I was a boy. It was 
something I wanted and which I took. Yet I am quite 
sure it has been good. 

On the other hand, the time when I strove hardest 
to reach a higher plane, when I was most anxious to 
be upright and honorable, those days I spent in France 
with Suzanne, resulted in the most bitter pain, the most 
dismal failure of my life. This is not a little thing to 
me, even after all these years. The days come when I 
must open my trunk, take out her rucksac and the 
map — the only mementos I have of her — they are 
days of anguish. Why should it not have been? My 
life seems bitter and of small worth when I think of 
what it might have been with her. 

I am as much at a loss today in regard to moral 
values as I ever was. I have little hope left of succeed- 
ing in my experiment. This is the sad thing. The 
good fight has been a long one. From the continued 
campaigning, I am prematurely spent. Under fifty, 
I am prematurely old. The elan of youth is gone. 

At the Hotel des Invalides in Paris they tell the 


310 


A MAN’S WORLD 


story of a war-scarred crippled veteran of the Napoleonic 
wars. His breast was covered with service medals. 
At one of the annual inspections a young commander 
complimented on his many decorations. “My General,” 
the old soldier replied, “I can no longer carry a mus- 
ket, it would have been better to have died gloriously 
at Austerlitz.” 

I am far from the sad pass of this decrepit veteran, 
yet his story touches me nearly. The best days have 
flown. I have lived intensely. Into each combat 
whether the insignificant skirmish of my daily work, 
or the more decisive battles — I have thrown myself 
with spendthrift energy. I do not regret this attitude 
towards life. I am glad I met its problems face to face 
— ^with passionate endeavor. But the price must be 
paid. Nowadays I have little ardor left. The youthful 
questing spirit is gone — and I have not found the Holy 
Grail. 

Perhaps these young people are right. I may have 
started wrong — ^in trying to find the truth for myself 
alone. Perhaps there are no individualistic ethics. 
They may find the answer expressed in social terms. 
Perhaps. But I have no energy left to begin the ex- 
periment again. 

But once more I must repeat, I do not regret my man- 
ner of life. We are offered but two choices; to accept 
things as they are or to strive passionately for new and 
better forms. Defeat is not shameful. But supine 
complaisance surely is. 

Out of the lives of all my generation a little incre- 
ment of wisdom has come to the race. Neither the 
renaissance, nor the reformation seem to me as funda- 
mental changes as we have wrought. We have made 


A MAN’S WORLD 


311 


the nation suddenly conscious of itself. We have not 
cured its ills, but at least we have made great strides 
in diagnosis. And my experiment — ^in its tiny, coral- 
insect way — ^has been an integral part in this increment 
of wisdom. 

I am more optimistic today than ever before. And 
if I wish to live on — as I surely do — ^it is to watch these 
youngsters in their struggle for the better form. How 
much better equipped they are than we were, how much 
clearer they see! 

I think of myself as I left college — so afraid of life 
that I was glad to find shelter among old books. I 
recall how strange seemed that first dinner in the Chil- 
dren’s House with Norman. And then I think of Billy. 
Why! The knowledge of life those pioneer settlement 
workers were just beginning to discover are conversa- 
tional commonplaces among Billy’s friends. The aboli- 
tion of poverty! 

The vision comes to me of Margot, delicate, fragile, 
ignorant — too ignorant to be afraid. All the wisdom 
of the ages — ^past and future — seemed to her to be 
bound up in the King James version. I compare her 
with Marie. She is as strong as a peasant girl. I have 
given up playing tennis with her, she beats me too 
easily. And the certain, fearless way she looks out at 
life takes my breath, leaves me panting just as her 
dashing net play does. She speaks of Ann as early Vic- 
torian, she would I fear place Margot as Elizabethan. 

Most wonderful of all, these youngsters have never 
had to fight with God, never had to tear themselves 
to pieces escaping from the deadly formalism and 
tyranny of Church Dogma. They never had to call 
themselves Atheists. 


312 


A MAN’S WORLD 


And then I think of how Billy and Marie are facing 
this biggest problem of all — this business of love. They 
will have their squalls no doubt and run into shoal 
water perhaps. But they are not blindfolded as I was, 
as Norman was — as all my generation was. Pure luck 
was all that could save us. They are steering — not 
drifting. 

Yes. My story is ended. The old troupe has been 
crowded off the stage. There would be little interest 
in writing of the work left me — brushing the wigs of 
the leading man, packing the star’s trunk, — pushing 
the swan for Lohengrin, currying the horses of the 
Walkyrie — it will all be behind the scene. 

And how I envy them their faith ! 

Ave — ^Juventas — morituri salutamus! 


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